Glencore taking out Minres? More MnA our way in Australia and We are one of the few with new assets ready to come online in immediate future.
Given that large copper mines often take more than 20 years to develop from discovery to production, the authors deem this outcome improbable. Five of the current top ten mines are expected to close by 2050, and many smaller mineswill follow suit.
However, mining economics notably worsen the picture. The rising development cost means that brownfield projects now require around $23,000 per ton of added annual production capacity. Since copper prices generally track capital intensity one-to-one, the authors conclude that "the future copper price must exceed $20,000 per ton" to make new development viable. At today's price of roughly $9,600, that means copper prices must more than double just to enable supply to meet projected demand.
Yet, those problems seem minuscule in comparison to supply problems when considering electrification and energy transition, especially the demand from wind and solar energy generation. If those two sources of energy were to dominate the power mix, annual copper mining would have to increase by 22.5 large new mines per year on average between 2018 and 2035.
"Deposits cannot be discovered and mines cannot be developed at this rate," the authors noted. In this scenario, more copper would be mined by 2050 than in all previous human history combined, with over half of the known copper endowment exhausted in just three decades.
T
https://www.benzinga.com/markets/commodities/25/05/45705051/energy-goals-are-impossible-without-copper-price-surge-study-shows
(20min delay)