S & P: global high-quality copper assets are likely to be scarce in 20 years' time

SMM8, March 15: s & P Global says global copper mining is at a record low and mining companies' exploration budgets have fallen. The company points out that in 20 years' time, there may be a shortage of high-quality copper assets around the world. (Kevin Murphy) Murphy, a senior research analyst at S & P Global Market Intelligence, said in a report on Friday that the copper exploration industry had failed to prosper after the market crash in which the copper budget fell sharply in 2008. Although copper prices have since recovered strongly and the global copper exploration budget reached an all-time high of $4.7 billion in 2012, the market has also been unable to develop large quantities of emerging copper assets, especially in the past three years. There are only nine new copper mines in the world.

Trend Map of Global Copper Exploration from 1990 to 2017

Another interesting aspect of the report is that since 1990, copper deposits in Latin America have accounted for almost half of the world's copper deposits. These copper mines are mainly concentrated in Chile and Peru, which alone account for 83 per cent of the total copper reserves in Latin America and 46 per cent of the world's total copper reserves. In contrast, the level of exploitation of copper resources in Canada and Russia has continued to decline over the past decade.

"although the country has been exploring its copper reserves in recent years, it is still smaller than Latin America, and there is not much room for large copper assets in the country," Murphy wrote of Canada. Murphy stressed once again that the decline in global copper reserves exploration may not be a major risk in the short term, but that in 20 years' time, a shortage of high-quality copper assets will affect global copper production.

In fact, the biggest short-term threat to copper production is the renegotiation of existing asset contracts currently under way at the mine, Murphy said.

However, in the long run, the lag of exploration and excavation of global new copper assets is the biggest bottleneck restricting the development and production of global copper projects.

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