mineral economics

5. The Thought
The March 26, 2011 issue of the Wall Street Journal
published a report pointing out that the car
manufacturing giants like Ford Motor Co, Volkswagen,
BMW, Toyota, etc. were facing problems due to the non
availability of the material Xirallic, which is used in
metallic paints required for glistening and shimmering the
car appearance.
The sole producer of the pigment—a Japanese company
located at the east coast of Japan—suffered significantly
because of the March 11, 2011 tsunami and the
subsequent release of nuclear radiation from the
Fukushima nuclear plant.
In short, any brake in supply chain of critical materials
would possibly lead to disastrous consequences.

6. Xirallic
• Xirallic is a pigment made of aluminum oxide platelets
covered with titanium oxide that shows a strong glitter
effect with a distinct shimmering behavior.
• It was developed and patented by researchers of the
company Merck KGaA in Japan.
• Because the pigment was produced at a single plant
in Onahama, production was severally curtailed following
the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.
• The shortage of the pigment caused Ford and Chrysler to
restrict the availability of cars and trucks in some red and
black paints.
• The shortage also affected other automobile makes.
• Hyundai replaced Xirallic with Mica in their paints.
• The plant reopened on 8 May 2011.

7. • Strategic Minerals (also know as Critical
Minerals) is a broad-based category that
constitutes various minerals and elements;
the majority of which are minor metals.
Geography and availability of domestic supply
often defines which minerals are deemed
"critical" for any particular region or country.

8. • Critical minerals are mineral resources that are
essential to the economy and whose supply
may be disrupted.
• The 'criticality' of a mineral changes with time
as supply and society's needs shift. Table salt,
for example, was once a critical mineral.
Today, many critical minerals are metals that
are central to high-tech sectors.
• They include the rare earth elements and
other metals such as lithium, indium,
tellurium, gallium, and platinum group
elements.

9. • By definition, critical minerals are essential for
society.
• Demand for critical minerals such as rare earth
elements has increased in recent years with
the spread of high-tech devices for personal
and commercial use such as wind turbines,
solar panels, and electronics such as
smartphones and tablets.

10. Definition of strategic minerals
• Minerals essential to the national defence, for
the supply of which, during war, we are wholly
or in part dependent on foreign sources, and
for which strict measures controlling
conservation and distribution are necessary.
For example, chromium- and tin-bearing
minerals, quartz crystal, and sheet mica were
some of the 'strategic minerals' during World
War II.

11. • India is dependent on imports for many
critical elements like rare earths elements,
selenium, germanium, rhenium etc. required
for clean-energy applications, solar cells and
high technology products.

12. • In pursuance of the MMDR Amendment Act 2015, the Government
has established the National Mineral Exploration Trust with the
prime objective of promoting regional and detailed mineral
exploration in the country.
• Further, the Government has formulated the National Mineral
Exploration Policy, 2016 for accelerating mineral exploration in the
country through diverse measures like open dissemination of
baseline geosciences data, launching of National Aero geophysical
Mapping Programme, attractive revenue sharing model for inviting
private investment in mineral exploration etc. All these are aimed
towards exploration and discovery of mineral deposits including
critical minerals.
• Out of 100 blocks identified by GSI for undertaking regional
exploration by private and public agencies, 22 blocks are for
strategic and critical minerals.
Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation)
Amendment

13. India is endowed with some finite reserves (and
in some cases large reserves) of approximately
85 mineral resources (11 metallic, 52 non-
metallic, and 22 minor ).
As is indicated in Table 1 (below) the supply of
many minerals is constrained not merely due to
the geological availability within India, but more
due to the lack of suitable technology adoption
and inefficient policy mechanisms to drive
mining and mineral exploration

15. The overall criticality status for the 33 minerals
is shown in Figure 1, and the location of
minerals can be in one of four zones:
a) Zone I - High economic importance with high
import dependency (5 minerals)
b) Zone II - High economic importance with low
import dependency (9 minerals)
c) Zone III - Low economic importance with low
import dependency (6 minerals)
d) Zone IV - Low economic importance with
high import dependency (13 minerals)

17. Several factors may combine together to make a raw
material (mineral or not) a critical resource. These may
include the following:
• A ceiling on production: when the raw material reaches
its Hubbert peak
• A drop in known deposits
• A decline in the ratio of production from the biggest
deposits to production from smaller deposits, since the
largest deposits supply most of a raw material's
production
• Inefficient price system: when the increase in
the price of a raw material does not result in a
proportional resulting increase in its production
• Costs of extraction (money or effort) increase over
time, as extraction becomes more difficult.

18. • The Hubbert peak theory says that for any
given geographical area, from an individual
oil-producing region to the planet as a whole,
the rate of petroleum production tends to
follow a bell-shaped curve. It is one of the
primary theories on peak oil.