Strategic Minerals

extract of article titled - It's Not Your Grandfather's Infrastructure - written by DANIEL McGROARTY, principal of Carmot Strategic Group in Washington, D.C., has testified on strategic materials in the U.S. House and Senate.....


"For instance, we'll need copper, and lots of it. The bad news is that we are too often import-dependent. Our annual "copper gap" is 600,000 metric tons. We'll need more aluminum, where the U.S. is down to a single smelter. We will need graphite and manganese for next-gen energy storage systems; the U.S. currently produces zero graphite — the last American graphite mine closed 25 years ago — and zero manganese, relying on China and South Africa to fill our delivery orders. We'll need more cobalt, coming now from strife-riven DRC Congo, more rhenium from Kazakhstan. The list of unstable material suppliers is long."

http://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/its-not-your-granndfathers-infrastructure/