Mineral reserves and future minerals availability

The surge in prices and global demand for minerals and metals in the 2004–08 boom reawakened fears about the longer-term availability of minerals. Some commentators have extended the petroleum industry's debate about ‘peak oil’ to the non-fuel minerals industry. The arguments are discussed with the conclusion that peak modelling is far too deterministic and simplistic to capture the subtleties of all the factors impinging on future supplies of mineral products. That does not mean that we should be complacent about the future availability of any mineral. Rather, it points to a genuinely multi-disciplinary approach to forecasting, and one that properly recognises all the inherent uncertainties.