I know they're producing and the startup costs shouldn't be a factor... otherwise no I don't know it.
Here's an article from stockhouse bullboards. I don't have a link to it though.
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Continuing the Trouble With Tungsten, Lessening Molybdenum Myopia
By Jack Lifton
25 Apr 2006 at 05:08 PM EDT
DETROIT (ResourceInvestor.com) -- Three months ago I published two separate articles on Resource Investor, 10 days apart, on the global supply and demand situation of two strategic metals, molybdenum and tungsten. The world’s metal based manufacturing industries cannot function without uninterrupted supplies of both of these metals, and our daily lives would be noticeably affected if we could not get them or if their prices continue to increase dramatically. Increasing Chinese domestic demand continues to be the driver for the market price in both molybdenum and tungsten.
Unfortunately, with regard to both metals, either a supply interruption, or a substantial price increase, or both seems to be a possibility in the U.S. home market. Here is an update on what has happened in the three months since the end of January and some investment information.
Tungsten
One Canadian national newspaper, The Financial Post, recently (April 22, 2006) highlighted the downside and the upside for Canada of volatility in the global tungsten market by claiming that the reason for the fact that the price (in U.S. dollars) of tungsten has doubled in just the past year is that the Chinese are “hoarding” the supply.
I don’t know that “hoarding” is the right word, but it is certainly the right description of the end result of China’s approach to protecting its domestic end users through central control processes. In fact, China now produces the largest single portion of the world’s total of 80,000 tonnes annual supply of new tungsten, but, since 1999, China has been reducing the amount of tungsten it exports. Last year, China exported only 16,000 tonnes.
Ominously, for non-Chinese end users, the Chinese economic press (Economic Daily) reported on March 29, 2006, that the head of the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association, Kang Li, said that “...China’s nonferrous metals industry will maintain rapid growth in 2006 under the government’s strategy for sustainable development. But he also noted the industry still faces major problems like resources shortage this year.”
Although it doesn’t specifically identify tungsten as a part of the resource shortage, this statement leaves little room for doubt that China could reduce or even eliminate tungsten imports if the government believes that to be in the best interests of the sustained growth of the Chinese economy just as they have been doing for the last seven years!
Now for the good news out of Canada: Tiberon Minerals, Ltd. [TSX:TBR] says that they are now two years way from producing tungsten at their Nui Phao Tungsten Project in Vietnam. Tiburon calculates that this mine’s output could increase world supply by 4,900 tonnes per year. Just as importantly the mine will be one of the first “new” mines to be developed outside of China in some time and will join a small but economically very significant group of such mines.
North American Tungsten Corporation, [TSX:NTC], another Canadian company, which I mentioned in my earlier article, reorganized itself in the bankruptcy experienced by most of the world’s non-Chinese tungsten producers after 1999 when the Chinese squeezed global tungsten prices to eliminate competition and has now brought its Cantung mine in Canada’s Northwest Territories back into production.
My opinion is that both of these companies are a good investment for Americans for a number of reasons:
Both are investments in non American assets that will gain in value if either the American dollar is devalued or the tungsten price is reset in Euro terms rather than U.S. dollars;
Canada produces, even just at Cantung, more tungsten supply than the Canadian end users demand, so it will always be exporting to the highest paying customer so long as global demand exceeds supply. In the case of Tiberon, it is likely that 100% of the Vietnamese production will go to the highest paying customer. Neither Canada nor Vietnam, so far as I know, stockpiles strategic materials on a mandatory basis;
Chinese domestic demand along with Indian domestic demand for tungsten based metal cutting tools, high temperature alloys, and armour and ammunition are increasing dramatically;
Russia, Portugal and the United States, all of which have tungsten deposits that either have been mined in the past or have been discovered but not developed are all bogged down by breakdowns in the economic system that interfere with natural resources development (Russia) or environmental politics that add years to the re-opening of a past producer and make new mine development impossible to justify by a timely return, and;
American industry would face shut downs if tungsten supply were interrupted, so American buyers will pay whatever price in whatever currency is required to keep the production machinery going.
Molybdenum
Since I last wrote about molybdenum there has been some significant movement in the American domestic market to re-open past producers and to develop new mines, because the global market is in a basic undersupply condition.
I said in my earlier article that considering all of the factors involved, the price of molybdenum would not go higher and would probably drop, as additional concentrates get refined in reopened capacity in the near term. I did not take into account the substantial increase in the demand for oil, Chinese resource shortages and the real possibility of U.S. dollar devaluation.
Phelps Dodge [NYSE:PD] has taken these factors into account and has just (April 6, 2006) announced the reopening of the old Climax Molybdenum Mine in the Leadville, Colorado, area. This is a dramatic vote by Phelps Dodge in the future value of molybdenum, because Colorado is one of the three most difficult places in the world to get an environmental permit to remove anything from the ground or process it above ground.
Phelps Dodge has committed up to $250 million to bring the Climax mine back into production beginning in late 2009 or early 2010. The mine when back to full operation is projected to produce 30 million pounds of Mo per year at an estimated cost of $4.00 (2006 U.S. dollars per pound). PD estimates that the value of this output will be, in constant 2006 dollars, $750 million per year. They are clearly putting their money where their mouths are.
The gold price “rush” now occurring is another factor increasing the supply of molybdenum in the U.S. Past producing gold mines are being brought into operation, as fast as environmental permitting will allow throughout the U.S. west.
Many of them produced molybdenum as a by-product that was ignored when, as recently as six years ago it was worth only $3.50 per pound. Last June, 2005, molybdenum touched $50 per pound; it has since settled at about half of that, but I think that we will not see any further decreases as long as the economies of Asia and India are growing.
Note also that Phelps Dodge has historically been a receptive toll producer for other companies, so some other gold miners with molybdenum by-products will not have to construct their own smelters. This will make permitting much easier for them.
Conclusion
Finally, since major mining companies today use juniors as their prospecting arms, keep your eyes open for reports of tungsten, molybdenum, vanadium and chromium, along with gold and platinum group metals reported and hyped by the juniors.
And if you must follow a trend let it be the trend to invest in natural resources outside of the United States other than gold and platinum. Maybe, just maybe, commodity and minor metals will be the new global currency.
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