CRITICAL MINERALS
The talk about “critical minerals” is more relevant now that ever. The supply of these minerals is more important than the others for the sake of a country’s prolonged well-being, continued progress, national security and other economic aspects. The importance, the supply and also the preferences vary between countries. So the criticality is measured with respect to countries that have a larger demand and impact on the world.
USGS (United States Geological Survey) categorizes the criticality on the basis of the following parameters:
- “essential to the economic or national security of the United States.”
- “serve an essential function in the manufacturing of a product… the absence of which would have significant consequences for the economic or national security of the United States”
- must have a supply chain that is “vulnerable to disruption…”
The list of critical minerals and their criticality also changes with time – say in short term versus medium term. Since critical minerals have been identified and there is more focus on them now than before, it is also fair to say that some of these minerals have not yet properly been identified around the world and others don’t have a mapping for the long term.
The list of critical minerals (for United states) as of 2022 are as follows; many have not heard of most of these minerals in their daily life:
(References available on demand)
As of 2025, the ‘major’ minerals that are needed in large quantities out of the above list such as Manganese, Aluminum (Bauxite), Copper, Lithium, Nickel are not too rare to worry about right now. However, in the next 10 years, almost all these minerals are going to have extreme supply challenges and very high importance in the energy security of most countries. Uranium has been included recently by many countries for the sake of the energy security and is actually not going to be difficult to find even though its uses in energy and national security are going to be of great value.
Take time to look deeply at these 2 graphs… these made me think of so many aspects…
(Source available on demand)
If there should be mineral investment consideration, critical mineral evaluation, analysis of the markets for each of the minerals in mining and logistics, it will become clear what we should focus on.
