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American Resources expert and Technology Metals Research co-founder, Gareth Hatch, has released a new study that highlights the implications of the supply and demand over rare earths elements. Hatch’s research also delves into how the United States can mitigate the current REE shortage.

The Critical Rare Earths Report features detailed evaluations of the supply challenges and qualitative rankings for individual REEs. Built on a set of four global supply projections for rare earth oxides, the study is packed full of visual data from now through 2017.

Highly relevant from a geopolitical perspective, the report also takes a look at the origins of the new sources of supply outside of China, and it examines how long China’s dominant position will last for each critical and non-critical REE.

The bottom line: While the days of Chinese dominance of the rare earths supply are numbered, the United States has a lot of catching up to do. Australian-based projects present themselves as the key non-Chinese alternative for the REE supply from 2013 onward, but the U.S. and Canada, while holding significant REE deposits, don’t “appear” on the scene until much later.

Download and print a free copy of Gareth Hatch’s Critical Rare Earths Report here.

Can crime be a leading economic indicator?  That’s the question occasioned by a growing number of news stories.

Sarasota County’s (FL) Herald Tribune this week features a story of an arrest of 62 people for stealing anything from air conditioners to copper wiring to plumbing parts. West Virginia’s Westport News reports the arrest of two suspects on charges of stealing aluminum lightning rods and copper from a hospital roof.  And according to the Greefield Reporter, two Pima County men were arrested for having stolen storm drains and other metals in Tuscon, AZ.

It may not be making national headlines, but local media reports are full of stories about scrap metal theft – an increasing problem that has law enforcement on their toes, and is causing massive damage for businesses worldwide.

In Europe, the railway system is bearing the brunt of metal theft, with copper wiring being a particularly popular target. Germany’s national rail provider Deutsche Bahn (DB) for example reported more than 1,400 cases of iron and non-ferrous theft in the first four months of 2011 alone, with the cost to DB amounting to millions of euros, not counting the damage caused to the company’s image in light of cancellations and delays due to missing cables.   The German weekly Der Spiegel has the story.

With record commodity prices and demand still expected to outpace supply for metals like copper, which some see as a new leading economic indicator, don’t expect metal thieves to retire anytime soon.

American Resources has partnered with the Northwest Mining Association and their The More You Dig campaign. Here’s a guest post from their Communications consultant, Izzy LaBranch, introducing the campaign: The More You Dig campaign, a project of the Northwest Mining Association, strives to change the public’s perception of mining by educating a younger audience about how mining (…) more

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The American Resources Policy Network has announced two new volunteer directors who will advise American Resources Principal Daniel McGroarty on the direction of the organization: Anne Darconte, Former Director of Outreach at the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association (NPRA), and Captain Nelson P. Jackson, U.S. Navy (Ret.), President and principal owner of (…) more

A sad, but not surprising, news story made its way across the wires this morning.  North Korea’s Kim Jong Il has approved a swap of sorts with its northern neighbor, China. The agreement will bring Chinese fertilizer and corn to his country’s famine-ravaged Hermit Kingdom in exchange for ceding to China rights to develop North (…) more

Earlier this week, ResourcefulEarth.org picked up on our initial calling out of a week-long campaign the environmental Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) Earthworks ran against the mining industry. Read our original post from August 12 here. The site’s follow-up post included a couple of take action items for its community, and we’d like to encourage our supporters (…) more

History is typically difficult to see up close, but it’s possible that resources are sparking a great geo-political reordering on par with the mass discoveries of oil that made the Middle East a rising economic power the mid-20th Century.  Witness the country of Mongolia, a geo-political pawn for much of the last hundred years, but (…) more

How do you break into the headlines these days – with Wall Street reeling, London burning, and carnage in the streets of Syria? A little hysteria helps. That’s the tactic employed by Earthworks, an environmental Non-Government Organization (NGO). The group has been running a national campaign this week aimed at pressuring the EPA to provide (…) more

Another example of what happens when one country dominates supply of a resource, California-based phosphor maker Intematix, relying on rare earths to produce phosphors used for fluorescent light bulbs and white LEDs, has decided to move some of its manufacturing to China.  The news comes on the heels of Japanese metals fabricator Showa Denko announcing (…) more

If you haven’t had the chance to visit our experts page yet, we’d like for you to meet two of the people who joined the American Resources panel of thought leaders and industry experts from the very start. Gareth Hatch is a founding principal of Technology Metals Research, LLC.  An authority in the area of (…) more