Norwegian here: the floor is getting more and faulty and it is dependent on the imperial mode of living generally and oil and arms exports specifically
Salmon seems like a very different resource than oil or rare earth metals. My understanding is that with the oil, it was a resource that largely came out of nowhere. One day Norway had little oil. Suddenly you find this vast field of immense unclaimed resources. It’s a huge resource that no one has a claim to. Thus, it’s reasonably easy to divide it in an equitable way. But salmon? People have been harvesting that resource since the dawn of time. There must be centuries of various rules, laws, ancient royal decrees, relating to who can harvest how much salmon. And there’s going to be people that if you tell them how much salmon they can catch, they’ll point out that their family has been harvesting salmon for generations, and it’s not fair to…And on an on.
Oil seems like a much easier resource to divide equitably, simply because there’s not such a cultural and legal history behind the management of the resource.
The issue with this is that there’s plenty of rare earth minerals (they’re not rare) all around the world, it’s the refining process that is expensive and extremely polluting.
Doesn’t matter if Norway found decades worth of supply, when nobody but China is willing to build the processing plants. And China has more than enough rare earth mineral supplies themselves.
Hard to say. Current political view seem to be that EU wants to get rid of dependancy on china and great way to get free is to start mining our own.
There is pretty large deposits in Sweden, Finland and Norway so one effiecient, central refining plant could be churning virtually limitless amounts of materials, if only there would be enough funding to get the ball rolling. (Before anybody says i know Norway is not part of european union, but it is part of european economic area and part of EFTA) France already has a refining plant so the tech knowledge is already found inside the EU.
The issue is that nobody has found a way to refine it in a way that isn’t extremely polluting without the cost being extremely excessive and making it entirely pointless.
We could mine as much as we want, but the only country OK with refining this stuff is China. Unless we solve the issue of refining this in a relatively clean way at a somewhat competitive price, no refining will ever be set up in Europe.
Caremag/Caresters plant in France is scheduled to open in 2026 and Solvay that is already running in France is trying to hit 30% of EU’s demand by 2030.
If we would start building the mines right now it would take close to 10 years to have the mines running. By that time the refining process in France should be pretty well tested and if there would be more minerals produced than they can process, building new facility with the know how they have accumulated and any progress in tech, is not that big of an leap anymore.
By the way this would be pretty close how Norway originally got their economy running with hydropower and later with oil. They waited until there was enough know how to make effective plants. Then they made deals with outside companies where the state would own part of the facilities, but the companies would make enough money to make a profit. After the deals would expire the state would get the now profitable facilities for them self, but the original companies had made enough money for the deal to be good for them.
Norwegian here: the floor is getting more and faulty and it is dependent on the imperial mode of living generally and oil and arms exports specifically
Didint you guys just find one of the biggest rare earth minerals deposit in the world?
Yes, we did. But with the current political climate I’m less and less sure that we’ll be able to handle it as well as we did with the oil.
If you want an example of an industry where we didn’t do a great job of spreading the wealth, you can look at our other major export: Salmon.
Salmon seems like a very different resource than oil or rare earth metals. My understanding is that with the oil, it was a resource that largely came out of nowhere. One day Norway had little oil. Suddenly you find this vast field of immense unclaimed resources. It’s a huge resource that no one has a claim to. Thus, it’s reasonably easy to divide it in an equitable way. But salmon? People have been harvesting that resource since the dawn of time. There must be centuries of various rules, laws, ancient royal decrees, relating to who can harvest how much salmon. And there’s going to be people that if you tell them how much salmon they can catch, they’ll point out that their family has been harvesting salmon for generations, and it’s not fair to…And on an on.
Oil seems like a much easier resource to divide equitably, simply because there’s not such a cultural and legal history behind the management of the resource.
The issue with this is that there’s plenty of rare earth minerals (they’re not rare) all around the world, it’s the refining process that is expensive and extremely polluting.
Doesn’t matter if Norway found decades worth of supply, when nobody but China is willing to build the processing plants. And China has more than enough rare earth mineral supplies themselves.
Hard to say. Current political view seem to be that EU wants to get rid of dependancy on china and great way to get free is to start mining our own.
There is pretty large deposits in Sweden, Finland and Norway so one effiecient, central refining plant could be churning virtually limitless amounts of materials, if only there would be enough funding to get the ball rolling. (Before anybody says i know Norway is not part of european union, but it is part of european economic area and part of EFTA) France already has a refining plant so the tech knowledge is already found inside the EU.
The issue is that nobody has found a way to refine it in a way that isn’t extremely polluting without the cost being extremely excessive and making it entirely pointless.
We could mine as much as we want, but the only country OK with refining this stuff is China. Unless we solve the issue of refining this in a relatively clean way at a somewhat competitive price, no refining will ever be set up in Europe.
Only sith deal in absolutes.
Caremag/Caresters plant in France is scheduled to open in 2026 and Solvay that is already running in France is trying to hit 30% of EU’s demand by 2030.
If we would start building the mines right now it would take close to 10 years to have the mines running. By that time the refining process in France should be pretty well tested and if there would be more minerals produced than they can process, building new facility with the know how they have accumulated and any progress in tech, is not that big of an leap anymore.
By the way this would be pretty close how Norway originally got their economy running with hydropower and later with oil. They waited until there was enough know how to make effective plants. Then they made deals with outside companies where the state would own part of the facilities, but the companies would make enough money to make a profit. After the deals would expire the state would get the now profitable facilities for them self, but the original companies had made enough money for the deal to be good for them.