Catastrophe Looms on the World

The basic material reserves (crude oil, copper etc.) in the world may be exhausted in 15 years or less

November 15, 2004
By Sonal Chatterjee, Special Correspondent
China Daily

According to some research groups in America and Russia, the mineral and basic material reserves are on their way to complete depletion by year 2020. As emerging economies in the world start consuming more of these basic materials, the prices of raw materials will go through the roof. Copper, Nickel, Aluminum, Gold, Silver, Uranium, Crude oil all will be exhausted in the next fifteen years.

It really means, unless the world is able to research alternative materials from bio degradable sources or otherwise, the world will starve from lack of basic materials.

The basic materials prices have been going up for the past two years. The major producers of basic materials are Russia, Canada, America, China, South Africa and Australia. However, no matter which mineral you talk about, all are ready to be depleted by 2020 if we assume 7% sequential growth in China and India and a 3% growth in the rest of the world!

Interestingly Russians provided the first alarm to the world. Russia currently is the largest producer of the basic materials including crude oil and other petroleum products.

Russia's gold and oil economic efficiency will be exhausted in 2011, Yury Trutnev, the Minister for Natural Resources stated at a recent session of the Russian government. The minister noted that the time when the reserves of certain kinds of mineral wealth would be exhausted in Russia was drawing near. Trutnev specified that the resources of crude, uranium, copper and gold would end in the country already in 2015.

"These terms do not raise big concerns at first sight. Yet, in the event the reproduction of mineral resources pauses due to peculiarities of geological preparations for deposits, it will be impossible to solve the problem of the mineral wealth deficit in Russia," the minister said.

Similar estimates are coming from inner sources in China, Australia and Canada.

The recent boom in Australian and Canadian currencies also pointed to the fact basic material shortage will be the biggest problem for the world. This can choke the technology based civilization of ours and the whole focus of every country can turn towards survival through innovation of alternative materials that can replace conventional materials.

Space exploration rooks a back seat in America and Russia for various political reasons and that was not good – says some experts. The only way to continue our modern technology based civilization is to feed the world with unlimited sources of basic materials.

The amount of mineral and energy sources that is being explored is becoming costlier because of excess cost of mining from deeper in the ground. Very soon it will become economically infeasible to mine because cost of mining will be more than material being mined.

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