metric tons of coal produced each year at Usibelli Coal Mine Inc.'s operations near Healy and shipped to Interior Alaska heat and power plants last year was not calculated into the 2022 Alas- ka mine production totals. With gold production expected to rise at both Kinross Gold Corp.'s Fort Knox and Northern Star Resources Ltd.'s Pogo mines in Interior Alas- ka, coupled with expected strong zinc prices due to global inventories held in London Metals Exchange and Chi- nese warehouses at historic lows, the production value from Alaska mines is expected to continue to climb in 2023. Increased supply, demand The value of the nonfuel miner- als extracted from Alaska mines rep- resents nearly 4.6 percent of the $98.2 billion in nonfuel mineral commodi- ties in the United States during 2022. The top 10 producing states last year were Arizona ($10.1 billion), Nevada ($8.93 billion), Texas ($8.03 billion), California ($5.61 billion), Minnesota ($4.78 billion), Alaska ($4.51 billion), Florida (more than $3.6 billion, exact value withheld due to proprietary crit-
ical minerals production values in the state), Utah ($3.6 billion), Michigan ($3.36 billion), and Missouri ($3.15 billion). Because these mined commodi - ties feed into virtually every industrial supply chain, their production sup- ports a significant portion of the U.S. economy. "Industries that use nonfuel min- eral materials created an estimated $3.64 trillion in value-added products in 2022, which represents a 9 percent increase from 2021," said Steven Fort - ier, director of the USGS National Min - erals Information Center. The increased domestic consump- tion of mineral commodities compared with 2021 is attributed to the continued recovery of markets from the impacts of COVID-19. Global supply chains and mineral commodity markets were significantly disrupted by the global coronavirus pandemic, especially in the first half of 2020. USGS, however, reports that mineral consumption in the U.S. began picking up toward the end of 2020 and through 2021. This upward trend in both minerals de- mand and prices continued into 2022,
with consumption of many mineral commodities now near or exceeding pre-pandemic levels. It is expected that U.S. mine pro - duction will continue to climb in the coming years due to the increased fo- cus on domestic production of miner- als critical to electric vehicles, green energy, high-tech devices, household goods, aerospace, and numerous other consumer and industrial goods. More critical minerals One of the mainstays of the annual USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries is keeping tabs on America's heavy de- pendence on imports for most of the minerals, metals, and groups of ele- ments critical to the nation's economy and security. During 2022, the U.S. was depen - dent on imports for more than half its supply of 50 out of the 64 nonfuel mineral commodities tracked by USGS and was 100 percent import-reliant for 15 of those. The list of mined commodities that the U.S. is fully dependent on foreign nations for its supply includes arsenic, CONTINUED on PAGE 20
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Winter 2023
The Alaska Miner
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