The Metals: Increasing Self-Sufficiency

All of the metals to be mined in the Birch Lake Project – copper, nickel, the platinum group metals and cobalt – are essential to our American way of life and society worldwide.  Anyone who turns on a light, takes a shower, eats breakfast, drives a car, works on a computer, flies in an airplane, or happens to fall ill, needs these metals.  Many are also critical to U.S. national security, but the nation relies heavily on foreign sources – some of which can be unstable or unpredictable – to supply them.  And just as with a resource like oil, it’s vastly preferable for the nation to be self-sufficient.

Since these metals are used in everyday necessities, it’s unlikely the demand for them will decline.  However, they are typically found in products with long lives, so they help reduce the impact on the environment that more frequent product replacement would create, especially in terms of energy.  They are also highly recyclable so once mined they can be used and re-used.  However, in recycling there are substantial losses.  In addition the long life of the products made with these metals results in a need for “new” metal due to increased demand.  For example, the copper cycle averages 20 or more years, so the recycled metal available is based on the metal products made 20 years ago.  In the meantime, though per capita demand in the developed world may have held relatively steady, populations have grown and demand in the developing world has been rapidly increasing. 

At this time, the known Birch Lake resources appear to be quite substantial and it is projected that the two-mine project would generate, annually, 74 million pounds of copper, 19 million pounds of nickel, 2.9 million pounds of cobalt, 7,400 ounces of gold, 33,000 ounces of platinum and 68,000 ounces of palladium.  About 75% of the total value of metals extracted would be copper and nickel.