Odd Lots · Monday, August 3, 2026
David Fickling criticizes the US Project Vault, a $12 billion plan for a strategic mineral reserve, for lacking clear inclusion criteria. He warns that without forceful government direction, it could become a way to provide price security for common commodities rather than focusing on truly critical minerals like tungsten, rare earths, gallium, and germanium.
“And I think the risk is that Project Vault becomes a way of hedging price risk for fairly common commodities like copper, like nickel, like aluminum, like metallurgical coal.”
“If the government is not very forceful. You don't actually end up getting the minerals you want in that, you just end up with the minerals where industry wants government backed price security. What you actually want is a fairly small group of minerals where there's a real strategic issue. And I think tungsten's one, I think rare to another, things like gallium, germanium. These are some of the crucial ones.”
“It'll be much cheaper, but you need to offer a medium term price security, long enough that miners can actually borrow against that price security.”