Research

The sector is not short of opinions. It is short of published method.

Analysis of the system the company operates in, written for the decisions people are actually making.

What is scarce in this market

Better decisions need better information. In critical minerals the information is scarcer than the capital.

Large sums are committed against forecasts that disagree with one another, and the disagreement is almost never explained. Method is what would explain it, and method is what is almost never shown.

Bbabsal publishes analysis of the system it operates in, on the parts of it we have to understand anyway to build in it. It is written to be cited, argued with and checked.

Independent

Published because it is true, not because it helps.

Evidence led

Primary sources. Named authors. Dated evidence.

Open method

Method published so the conclusion can be argued with.

Policy facing

Written for a decision somebody is actually making.

We hold a position in our own conclusions, and say so. The answer to that is not silence. It is decomposing the numbers, dating the evidence, writing against our own book, and publishing the error rate.

Published

Study Us Refining

Study, August 2026

The United States mines more copper than it refines

Ten years of government data, and one number that does not fit.

In 2024 the United States mined an estimated 1,100 thousand tonnes of copper and refined 850 thousand tonnes from ore. It exported 320 thousand tonnes unrefined and imported 810 thousand tonnes of finished metal.

The study sets out what the record shows and what it does not, including the two developments that cut against a simple decline narrative. Every figure is quoted from the edition of the source in which it was published.

Read the study

What we publish

Processing

What the ten year record shows about American refining capacity, import reliance and where refining moved.

Published

Method

What modern targeting can extract from a national airborne survey, and where the method stops working.

In preparation

Markets

Deficit forecasts disagree by a wide margin. The spread between forecasters carries more information than any single figure inside it.

In preparation

Policy

Which instruments have actually moved a plant from announcement to permit, and which have not.

Planned

Geology

What a sedimentary province a century into its mining history still has left, and where the remaining discoveries are likely to sit.

Planned

Why this can be cited

Sources

Primary, and named

Government statistics, filings and technical literature, cited so a reader can go to the source and disagree with our reading of it.

Authors

Named, with credentials

Nothing is published anonymously. The person who did the work is the person answerable for it.

Corrections

Published and dated

Errors are corrected in public with the date attached, so anyone who cited an earlier version can see what changed.