Future copper resources

Abstract

Concerns about future supplies of raw materials demand careful examination of underlying assumptions and data. Flawed deposit information, ignored undiscovered resources and questionable assumptions about future consumption require a new look at copper resources.A careful compilation of 1978 copper-bearing mineral deposits totals 2700 million metric tons of copper including past production—considerably more than reported in previous studies. About 69% of the copper is in porphyry copper deposits and 12% in sediment-hosted copper, Magmatic sulfide (mostly intrusive Ni) deposits account for 5.1%, and IOGC adds about 4.7%. VMS deposits represent 45% of the 1978 deposits but only 4.9% of the copper.The largest 20% of the deposits account for over 92% of the total copper metal. In other words, total Cu content in the smaller 1600 deposits is only about 8% of all Cu known in all deposits. This is a consequence of highly skewed frequency distributions of deposit tonnages and contained metals in all kinds of mineral deposits. This relationship is critical if one is concerned about long-term supply of copper. Typically, distributions of contained metal can be modeled well by the lognormal distribution for individual types of deposits.Information used here and in many other studies on copper includes past production. Total past production through 2015 is about 667 million tons Cu. After subtracting past production from the total copper in known deposits, the remaining unproduced copper from known deposits is 2030 million tons. Known deposits inform us about undiscovered copper resources.Over 80% of known copper is in porphyry copper and sediment-hosted copper deposits. A reliable and robust USGS managed global assessment of 225 tracts for porphyry Cu and sediment-hosted Cu produced an expected value estimate of 3500 million tons Cu in undiscovered deposits. Deposit types not assessed such as IOGC are likely to have significant amounts of undiscovered copper. If the proportion of total Cu accounted for by the two major deposit types assessed is the same proportion in all undiscovered deposits, total Cu expected in these other deposit types would add an additional 850 million tons. The reasonable estimate of copper in undiscovered mineral deposits of 4350 million tons when added to the unmined 2030 million tons in known deposits provides an estimate of 6380 million of tons Cu, which far exceeds estimates published by other researchers.Growth in copper production appears to be exponential over time but appears to be linear with respect to population. Demand for copper is not driven by time, but rather by population and per capita income. Rates of population increases are slowing and incomes in many countries are increasing. Per capita consumption of copper will increase over the coming years as populous nations such as China and India develop increasing per capita incomes, but the demand will likely level off as their economies improve. The large estimated copper resources along with evidence of slowing demand for copper over the long term considerably extend the time of “peak copper” and the long mine life of large deposits means the decline in production after will not be rapid. The focus of copper supply concerns should be on important problems such as improving recovery rates, careful consideration of the benefits and costs of mining very large deposits, technologies to increase exploration success in covered areas and reducing costs of underground mining.