Oklahoma Earthquakes Correlate With Waste Water Disposal -- June 8, 2017

Not fracking; waste water disposal. Huge difference. Related, but huge difference.

Once the state regulated waste water disposal more aggressively, things seemed to settle down.

Story over at OGJ.

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Cobalt

Updates

October 31, 2017: from Bloomberg -- 

The Canadian Ghost Town That Tesla Is Bringing Back to Life Renewed demand for cobalt, the metal, is breathing new life into Cobalt, the town.Ironically, Cobalt, Ontario—population 1,100—was built on silver.   

If you can't get to the story due to a paywall, here's another story from CBC News:

There's an old school gold rush underway in northern Ontario, but the demand is for a special metal that is used in everything from smart phones to electric cars.

More than a dozen mining companies are staking out claims in Cobalt, Ont. as price of the mineral with the same name rises, according to the Northern Prospectors Association.

"The whole situation is a cobalt-style rush, just like an old fashioned staking rush," said Gino Chitaroni, president of the Northern Prospectors Association and a geologist from the area.

The town of Cobalt is located along the Quebec border, near Temiskaming Shores in northern Ontario, and is best known for the massive amounts of silver that were extracted a century ago.

Original Post

 

Wow, I can't believe this! I had a post on "cobalt" in draft for several months. I finally deleted it last night because not much seemed to be happening. Then this, in today's WSJ: why investors are amassing cobalt.

Every few months, Robert Mitchell travels from his office near Portland, Ore., to a Connecticut warehouse and checks in on his biggest investment.

Mr. Mitchell’s fund owns millions of dollars worth of cobalt. He is so confident that its use in electric-car batteries will cause demand to surge that he has been buying and storing more than a thousand metric tons of the stuff—worth more than $56 million at current prices.

He feels he has little choice but to hold physical metal, since acquiring a cobalt position in financial markets is so hard.

“There’s a lot of money looking for a home in cobalt,” Mr. Mitchell said. “They really don’t have a great way to play it.”

Cobalt has long been a component in tires, magnets and smartphones. Now, it is the latest material, along with lithium and copper, to benefit from its use in the lithium ion-batteries that power electric vehicles.

Slightly more than half of all cobalt bought or sold last year went toward rechargeable batteries, up from 20% in 2006, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.

Battery manufacturers’ soaring demand for the hard, silvery metal has propelled cobalt’s value to its highest level since 2008. Prices are up 70% this year through Wednesday to $56,500 a metric ton, making it the top-performing commodity traded on a major futures exchange.

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No Cobalt For Sophia And Me -- Going Swimming