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As CNN writes, “this year’s Super Bowl viewership can be neatly divided into four segments: Those who like football and Taylor Swift, those who only like football, those who only like Taylor Swift, and those who like neither but are, for whatever reason, watching anyway.”

For most, there’ll be plenty to talk or fight about, but if you’re in the fourth segment, or are simply looking for a different conversation topic at the viewing party you’re attending, here’s some food for thought and discussion, courtesy of the Minerals Council of Australia. The Council has put together a great wall calendar for this year, the year of the XXXIII Olympiad, visualizing the metals and minerals that make sporting moments possible.

Sports moments covered on the calendar range from the Australian Open in tennis over the U.S. Masters golf tournament to the premier bicycle race in the world, the Tour de France among others.

Not surprisingly, the Super Bowl, which has the Kansas City Chiefs facing off against the San Francisco 49ers at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas this Sunday, made the month of February in the calendar.

Take a look at the fun visual of what metals and minerals make up the giant LED mesh screen at Allegiant Stadium, enable the half time show, made the construction of the translucent dome tent possible, went into the motorized retractable turf field, and provide the comforts of a climate-controlled stadium here:

To followers of ARPN, most of the metals and minerals will look familiar because most of them also feature on the U.S. government’s Critical Minerals List (or, in the case of Copper, should be featured on it, as we have frequently outlined.) and make an appearance on the “Blue Wall of Dependency” in USGS’s most recent Mineral Commodity Summaries, as the U.S. is import-reliant for many of them.

With Taylor Swift having become a massive draw for the Chiefs and the NFL, the term “Era” gets tossed around a lot, alluding to the megastar’s record breaking concert series.  Some say Taylor Swift is in her “NFL Era,” many Swifties previously indifferent about football consider themselves in their “Chiefs Era,” and the NFL has been said to have entered the “WAG Era.”  While these labels are subjective and only apply to certain people or groups of people, there is no denying that collectively, we have all entered the Tech Metals Age, to keep with the time period label theme.

Once the motorized turf has been retracted at Allegiant Stadium, the conversation should shift towards securing the supply chains that underpin the technological advances of said Tech Metals Age that allow us to not only enjoy the Super Bowl, the Olympics and the World Series (all of which are also featured on the calendar), but also the conveniences of everyday life, as well as our national and economic security.

Earlier this month, industry stakeholders and investors flocked to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to attend the kingdom’s Future Minerals Forum.  Reports that Saudi Arabia was throwing its hat into the critical minerals ring had made headlines on several occasions throughout 2023, but the kingdom’s growing importance was palpable at the event, which previously had not been “on the circuit for most of the industry’s biggest players.”  According to Bloomberg, the event drew about 16,000 delegates, among them top representatives from nearly every leading mining company and a significant contingent of U.S. government officials.

As ARPN noted in 2023, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman is preparing to invest billions of dollars into the mining sector to harness the potential of more than $1.3 trillion worth of metals and minerals the Saudi government claims are buried in the kingdom in the context of his Grand Vision 2030 plan to transform the Saudi economy.  If successful, he would make mining the so-called “third pillar” of the economy next to oil and gas.

More specifically, the kingdom is looking to secure access to materials ranging from the battery criticals to other 21^stcentury tech metals which are to be processed by new refineries and smelters to feed a “wider industrial network” across the country.

But what does Saudi Arabia’s “plunge into the world of mining” mean for the rest of the world, and especially the United States and its allies?

Thomas Biesheuvel, writing for Bloomberg’s Energy Daily, believes that the emergence of Saudi Arabia will make it “even harder for the U.S., Europe and Japan to secure the battery minerals they want.”

Says Biesheuvel:

“Saudia Arabia crashed into the world mining scene in the middle of last year with a $2.6 billion deal to buy 10% of Vale SA’s base metal unit, beating off competition from Qatar and Japan in the process.

It’s looking to buy more stakes in foreign mining operations through Manara Minerals Investment Co., a vehicle established by the kingdom’s powerful sovereign wealth fund and Saudi Arabian Mining Co. In doing so, it wants to secure metal offtake in return.”

Biesheuvel argues the model is similar to one long deployed by Japan’s commodity trading houses, but Saudi Arabia’s Mantra is state backed, and can “deploy capital with long-term strategic goals in mind.”

He concludes:

“That poses a challenge for countries such as the US, which is rushing to catch up. There have been suggestions the nation could piggyback off Saudi ambitions to secure its own supplies — essentially subcontracting out the heavy lifting.  But Saudi Arabia’s focus is to develop its own industry, and it’s becoming clearer that it will work with any country that helps achieve those goals.”

Reports in the fall of 2023 indicated that auctions for exploration licenses in the kingdom had only attracted smaller players thus far, but ARPN posited at the time that the crown prince’s willingness to take commercial risks might draw in the big players before long.  The buzz around this month’s Future Minerals Forum clearly points in this direction.

Saudi Arabia has clearly taken note that we are leaving the Petro Age, and is taking steps to position itself in a post-Petro Tech Metals Age.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has taken several positive steps to strengthen domestic supply chains, but, with the U.S.-Chinese trade war showing signs of intensifying and other players — like Saudi Arabia — making an emphatic entrance onto the world stage of the resource wars, it is time to cast aside simplistic “not in my backyard,” or “keep it all in the ground” mantras that still appear to hamper U.S. resolve, and to push forward with a comprehensive all-of-the-above critical mineral resource strategy.

– A Look at 2023 Through the Prism of Critical Mineral Resource Policy -  In the waning days of December 2022, ARPN and others were gearing up for a watershed year in the critical minerals realm – a year which could be a “breaking point if there is to be an EV revolution/transformation,” and one that would [...]

While critical mineral supply chain security has become more than an obscure concept these days, many people will still associate metals like lithium, cobalt or maybe rare earths with it, rather than some of the more mainstay metals. However, that does not mean we should not be worried about their supply. As Dario Pong, founder [...]

Gathering for the Financial Times’s Mining Summit both in person and online last week, chief executives of global copper mining companies sounded the alarm on the insufficient number of copper mines currently under development to supply the surging material needs of the ever-accelerating green energy transition. Copper prices may have dropped, however demand for the [...]

Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported that Saudi Arabia was in early talks with U.S. automaker Tesla to set up a manufacturing facility in the kingdom. While Tesla CEO Elon Musk has since denied these rumors as “utterly false,” whether or not a the two parties are in fact in talks over a rumored Saudi offer to Tesla to [...]

 For all the talk about reducing our over-reliance on foreign critical mineral resources against the backdrop of soaring demand, strained supply chains and increasing geopolitical tensions, last week’s release of the annual USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries report still paints a sobering picture. While the number of metals and minerals for which the U.S. remains 100% import dependent [...]

As a highly versatile key mainstay metal, copper has been a building block of humanity’s progress. As a gateway metal, it yields access to critical minerals.  It also is an energy metal — an indispensable component for advanced energy technologies, ranging from EVs and wind turbines to the electric grid and solar panels. But for all its traditional and new applications [...]

  2022 surely was as fast-paced a year as they come. Didn’t we just throw overboard our New Year’s Resolutions?  We blinked, and it’s time for another review of what has happened in the past twelve months. So with no further ado, here is ARPN’s annual attempt to take stock of what has happened on the [...]

We’re “on a highway to climate hell.” The picture UN Secretary General Antonio Gutierrez is painting of current efforts in the climate fight is – expectedly – bleak. As such, it is no surprise that nations have been doubling down on their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and the Biden Administration is no exception. Followers of ARPN have [...]