I love the agency. Its done a lot of good work. About 35 years ago, their director at the time, vince mckelvy, sat down and pretty much pulled together on his own the idea of Mineral Resource classification. It really hadnt been put out there as succinctly as vince put it out as you see here posted behind me. He said, look, we have two classes of minerals, reserves and resources. The reserves i can identify, map them, drill them, core them, assay that and i can tell you, for example, their measured or inferred value. Versus resources that i havent discovered yet but theyre hypothetical or maybe even speculative. He made that distinction and further divided resources into measured and indicated. In the upper lefthand corner youll see the box reserve, and thats what reserves are. Theyre indicated theyre actually bankable in the oil industry. You can book reserves, take to the bank, its collateral. Same in the Mining Industry. So theres a difference between re reserves and resources. The media sometimes will mix them up. We need to keep them straight in our mind. If i tell you we need more critical Mineral Resources, well, okay, there arent any more. The resources are what they are. T what we need to is identify more critical mineral reserves and map those and value those. In addition to fixed and geologic time and space, economics will govern whether a Mineral Deposit is mineable or not. Okay . In you look down the column, marginally economic, subeconomic, or no one is interested in it. Depending how easy it is to get to. The harder it is to get to, the more money its going to take. As the price for a commodity goes up, theres more money available to get it and this whole chart here can be summarized as an analogy in the oil and gas industry. The oil and gas found now is called unconventional. And that is able to be pulled out of the ground because the price for it will allow companies to go in and make unconventional discovery and production. And so it all ties together that way. Lets move on and look at the difference between critical and strategic. Here are two just very brief definitions. Critical is essential to the economy and strategic is a subset of that. Okay . The implications are listed below. The terms are often used interchangeab interchangeably, sometimes theyre confused. Dont worry about it. Its not that big a deal. Theres really no official government definition. The lists of minerals and strategic and critical, they differ from time to time and because of economic conditions. They do infer a supply chain which marc is going to get into here in a little while. They also infer that theres foreign imports, either partial or total, so thats of interest to us. And there could be severe economic repercussions if for a shortage of Critical Minerals and, of course, National Security concerns tells you that mineral is strategic. This, as i said, probably one of the best public sources on the topic and, again, the definitions are a little squishy but they say theyre minerals that actually dictate the Economic Health of the nation or Strategic Minerals will always be critical wut krit but Critical Minerals will not always be strategic. Okay . Now, here the different metals and elements involved in both classes, and you could read that, again, the books get into it in detail. I dont want to belabor it today. Strategic Minerals Include rare earths. Fissionable materials for platinum displays in the military especially. Speaking of which National Security is urgent. And when we need a mineral, we need it, and basically if you look right here at what is required for two jet engines for a fighter aircraft, its surprising how much and what, but even more of a surprise is the fact how much of that we have to import, and its really something that gives us pause as far as our military requirements. I want to go through now a series of maps and just to show you the geology behind Critical Minerals. You know, this is a generalization of polymetallic deposits worldwide. I say the mine locations, the trading partners are fixed in space and time depending what country. I mean, the geology is fixed. Theyre there, and whoevers in power, whatever. The deposits are there. If we bore down and look at strategic and Critical Minerals, like platinum, for example, rare earths, there are much fewer deposits and theyre scattered. And compare that on this image to copper, you see it almost on every continent. Or as the critical platinum and critical rare earth are the black squares and the black dots. Much, much more restrictive. Now, part of the reason were concerned is because over the last 60 years, this is what has happened. In the 50s, we were hardly reliant at all. If you see here in the lower left corner the numbers of minerals from other countries, many of them friendly. 30 years later in the 80s, we had more and more imports beginning with russia now and even china, and by the year 2014, 60 years later, were importing dozens and dozens and dozens of minerals. A lot of them from china. Many of them from canada, our partner, but some of them from places in the world where we wish we didnt have to be. The countries who are most stable in the world are the best trading partners. The white house has come out, office of science and technology policy, come out with a report in which they give a stability index or Governance Index involving stable, economics, political, what have you. And basically the best countries are in green. The most stable. The ones in red are to be avoided if possible. Yet if thats the only source of a mineral, like cobalt from africa, central africa, theres not much you can do about it. Closer to home we have the polymetallic minerals in the United States, notice theyre mainly in the western states. Those locations are fixed by their gee yolgs. We look at a critical mineral like rare Earth Elements, theres a lot of them. Mainly ar advertiseal. One operating in California Mountain pass, and the company that ran it declared bankruptcy. Right now the United States has zero commercial rare earth production. Bear lodge, wyoming, situation, im going to get here in a bit, thats our next best and only hope to produce rare earths that we need right now. And ill end my section by showing you this. Since there are no commercial mines in operation now, if i go to this slide, you can see, yes, there arent any from the United States but look at the big 800pound gorilla down there. We have a 95pluspercent production from china, and they basically cornered the market on rare earths. Japan knows it, we know it, Everybody Knows it. This is something that although the price came way, way down, still, they have the market and its something to be reckoned with. I now will bring up marc humphries. Hes going to talk about supply and demand of Critical Minerals. Thank you, ned. Thank you, pat, for the intro. As he said, i work for the Congressional Research service which is a research arm of congress. We do nonpartisan objective policy analysis for members, staff, for members and committee staff. And ive been working on mineral issues for the past 28 years there. This is a little repetitive, here, but this is a definition that was taken from the National Research councils book where they try to separate out the difference between critical and strategic saying strategic may be more of the military focus where we know they have a National Strategic stockpile, and the Critical Minerals may focus more on the economic and civilian needs. So a little repetitive. But the main thing with the National ResearchCouncils Report ned talked about was the framework. They established a framework thats widely used around the world to define what is criticality, what is the criticality of different minerals. And try to use this matrix here to show supply risk on one and the importance of use and lets say lack of substitutes on the other axis and the higher further right you go, the more critical the material might be. This is just an example on some of the minerals they looked at. To kind of classify. One of the key things that came out of this, this is a fluid or dynamic type of assessment. This was done around 2008, 07 or so, it was redone by the department of energy. Which looked at using the same matrix to try to classify where the minerals would fit on this matrix. Whether theyre critical, near critical, not critical. But its fluid so this can change at any time. It can change year to year. What ive done is also highlighted this import reliance chart which is hard to read, but there are 19 minerals that the u. S. Is 100 import reliant on at this point. And if you go all the way down, theres many more that theyre still import reliant on but not 100 . Ive taken several of these minerals and looked at them a little more closely to try to highlight the minerals that are being used in the hightech world, the clean energy world, and to show where the supply and demand, what it looks like, what its looked like oef tver the p 20 years. The key thing here, though, is not so much that were 100 or the 90 or 75 import dependent, but the key thing is to know where the minerals are coming from. What countries are supplying them, who are the Companies Involved in production. 100 import dependent on bauxite is not the same as 100 import dependent on niobium or tantamum. Meaning that for bauxite, you have several countries and several Companies Involved in production. Most of the countries are friendly and allied countries. So theyre not so theres less Political Risk and perhaps less financial risk involved in production of some of the minerals that were 100 dependent on. The United States has a framework, they have a policy framework. And this just kind of spells it out here that theres interest in domestic exploration and production when its possible. But theres also interest in developing reliable trade partners, reliable supplies of these minerals. So not just the emphasis on Domestic Production but also on securing supplies from around the world and get the most reliable access as possible. These are some of the minerals that im looking at. These are not classified as strategic or Critical Minerals necessarily. This is just a list thats been looked at. These minerals have been looked at by the National Research council, department of energy. They have been looked at by European Union because of their importance, as i mentioned earl earl. The hightech and clean energy world. Also National Security and defense. Tease are vitally important and been looked at more over the last, say, eight or nine years. Just as in the past weve looked at supplies of platinum, cobalt, chromium, lead, zinc, you know, minerals that were focused or produced primarily in africa and where the alternative supplier might have been russia or soviet union at the time. This kind of analysis and assessments have been taking place for decades, but the list of men rinerals has changed recently. This indicates the United States is a Pretty Healthy consumer of these materials. Theyve gone up in most categories. Po most of these have gone up tremendously. Niobium, rare earths, tatium. But the real story with consumption is not the United States. Its really china. I dont have a slide to show t but they have supply chains where theyre refining, making metal alloys and products. These are materials that the United States is heavily dependent on as well. This is where folks are looking for generally minerals overall. Most of this money is involved in gold. And other precious metals. But it just gives you an idea of where the money is being spent. United states is still a destination point even though it has 7 in 2014, but remember, thats 7 of 10. 7 billion or 750 million. So the amount of exploration money has gone up in the United States. Its been consistent where in 1996 it was about 350 million, where now its up 750 million. So you can see where folks have been looking. Its just, in many cases, these hightech metals are either not found or not found in economic quandaries here and theyre better, or there are lower cost producers elsewhere in the world that we have trade relations with, okay . Here is a snapshot of some of the world reserves of these materials, and this chart and the next chart really just lets you know the concentration of where these minerals are loca located. Where you can see almost half of the cobalt reserves are in the congo. Lithium. Two suppliers have well over half of the reserves of lithium. South africa and ukraine have more than half of the manganese depos deposits. China is main producer, you know, even though they have about 42 of known reserves. They still are producing 85 of rare earth materials. Tantinum is a little different, its a little odd. The usgs reports most other reserves are in australia and brazil, but half the production is taking place in rwanda and large part in the congo. Basically what theyre says, they really dont know whats going on with tantalum. Australia is not producing any longer. They were producing years ago. And if most of its coming out of rwanda and congo, what are the reserve numbers . A lot of the information is not available. We really dont know. So heres the production picture here where you can tell where production side has really changed dramatically in 20 years. Its gone up tremendously. And this is where production has taken place. Again, its the concentration of production. So when the United States is 100 dependent on niobium imports, you got 91 coming from one country, you have 95 of the reserves in one country. Thats a cause for some concern at least to assess the vulnerabili vulnerability, were talking about the vulnerability of supply more than how much were importing. How vulnerable is the United States to disruptiondisruptions it be political instable or labor strikes, catastrophic disasters. If this one source of supply and theres no capacity or little capacity elsewhere, then that can be a concern. Lets look down the chart here where we see tantalum again. 50 coming from rwanda, but theres no real assessment of reserves going on there. China, 85 . Lithium, between two countries, you have well over 50 here. Same with cobalt, manganese. Three countries dominating production of manganese. And bonadium, china, south africa. So this is so the production side is only one side of it. Again, theres cause for concern when it comes to vulnerability. Assessing the vulnerability of sources of supply. But thats only part of the picture. I put this slide up to show the rest of the picture that has to be looked at. When you assess each mineral on its own, take each one and look at the entire supply chain to see where the vulnerabilities might be along the way. Not just in production. Production may be bad enough when it comes to rare earth supplies, but then what about the separating reduction to metal, forming alloys, magnets, to manufacture Permanent Magnets. All these things essential. Where is the supply chain for each of these minerals that we might consider possible Critical Minerals . And that, i think, needs to be an area that you need to thrill down on a little deeper. Looking at each material thats possibly critical and where the supply chain is. And theres been a lot of concern about building our supply chain for rare earths in the United States. A lot of interest on capitol hill and elsewhere, and, you know, the thing is, what has to happen is to be able to have reliable supply chain wherever it is. So if, in fact, a complete supply chain is not developed on domestic soil, it may be that with partnerships, with collaborations, with between countries and companies, reliable supply chains can be built out around the world. As long as its reliable. Thats the key. I think the concern here is that with rare Earth Elements, this may not be a reliable supply chain for the United States that it depends strictly on the Permanent Magnets for both the hightech, clean energy and National Security needs of the country. I think thats think thats about it. Okay. All right. Okay. In the time final leg of the talk, id like to bet into some issues that place pressure on our u. S. Mining industry such as it is right now. And im going through four slides, and well talk about them, and youll see, i think, four different types of pressure being experienced by the Mining Industry. And then well get into what theyre going to do about it because they do provide us Critical Minerals and if theyre pressured and they cant, like mollycorp, declare bankruptcy, then we have a bigger issue on our hands. First, i want to spotlight legal pressure. There are lawsuits, singleissue, sometimes environmental issue lawsuits that can stop a companys progress in its tracks. Land use limitations fall under that. The