Archives for Commodities - Page 21
In discussions with investors over the past few months, I have observed that most do not understand the relationship between gross metal value in a concentrate and the net percentage of that gross that the seller will actually receive. Further, there can also be significant costs associated with terms of…
Elements at risk of supply (often referred to as strategic minerals/metals) have made headlines over the past couple of years. This has been a direct result of China re-imposing export quotas on those elements where it is the world’s leading supplier. One of the biggest price bubbles due to supply…
This part only considers internationally-traded coal, which has quite different metrics to that of internally traded coal. For example, the rapid increase in the supply of natural gas in the United States has put extreme downward pressure on natural gas prices. This in turn has seen power generators switching from…
It is estimated that, in 2011, there were around 850 billion tonnes of coal reserves (of all types) worldwide. The regions with the biggest coal reserves are, in order: North America, Russia and countries of the former USSR, China, Asia Pacific and India. Total global coal production in 2011 is…
Coal rank is effectively a measure of the maturity of coal. The first stage of the coalification of peat forms brown coal, or lignite, followed by subbituminous coal, bituminous coal and finally anthracite. Before discussing each coal rank in a little more detail, it is important to note that there…
Coal is two-faced. It gives warmth, heat and power, but with that comes appalling working conditions, death, despair and heavy-duty pollution. Archaeologists tell us that cavemen used coal for heat. The Chinese used coal to smelt copper for coinage around 1,000BC, and the Romans used it for heat around 400BC…