“The driving force: As the new giant economies of the world accelerate, competition for the planet's most critical natural resources is intense and mounting.
This competition is impacting oil, uranium, gold, silver, copper, steel, timber and more.
It's pitting the U.S. against Russia, India against China, and China against Japan.
And it's creating a massive, dramatic, sometimes earth-shattering groundswell of demand.

Everywhere, these giant nations are scrambling to get the natural resources they need to meet the voracious appetite of their expanding economies. And every day, the nations that are richest in natural resources — Canada, Australia and Brazil — are stepping up to feed them.
 
No Wonder Resource Prices Are Surging!
The price is surging on nearly every natural resource imaginable — silver and gold, petroleum and water, coal and diamonds, natural gas and uranium.
From time to time, the bidding war for these natural resources — and for the companies that produce them — subsides temporarily. So prices come down from their peaks.
Good. That gives you the entry window you need. But soon the lull ends, and natural resource investments rebound.
 
The main reason: Stretching into the future as far as one can see, the tight supplies of natural resources are likely to get tighter. Demand is likely to continue growing by leaps and bounds. Behind the scenes, the triple-whammy of escalating demand, dwindling supplies and international tensions point to one thing only: Wave after wave of price increases that could define the 21st century.
 
This bull market in natural resources didn't begin yesterday. It started early in the decade as gold and oil prices hit bottom and turned decisively higher.
Nor will it end tomorrow. Quite to the contrary, the bull market in resources could last for 10 years ... 15 years ... even longer.
 
Indeed, we may be witnessing a "commodity supercycle" — the kind of once-in-a-century event that can last for decades and send prices higher than you dare imagine. Here are just two of the main arenas of the most intense competition for resources ...
 
China Eats The World
What were sleepy little villages in China as recently as five years ago are now sprawling cities with skyscrapers, factories, and highways. The amount of material needed to build this ever-growing infrastructure is enormous.
Meanwhile, our trade deficit with China is putting $200 billion directly into China's booming economy. 1.3 billion Chinese are morphing right before our eyes — becoming not only a manufacturing superpower but also a nation of consumers.
Conspicuous consumption has hit China — and they want it all. Cars. Refrigerators. Air conditioners. That means steel, and lots of it.
No wonder the price of iron has jumped — steel production requires iron. In fact, according to investment banker CLSA in a report appropriately titled China Eats the World:
"China's combined share of world consumption of aluminum, copper, nickel and iron ore doubled from 1990 (7%) to 2000 (15%), is now about 20%, and is likely to double again by the end of this decade."
Then there's energy. The number of cars on the roads of China is doubling and tripling. More cars, more gasoline. So China's oil imports are surging.
Time after time, China and India have engaged in fierce bidding wars over oil assets around the world — Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Ecuador, Myanmar, and the Sudan. China emerged the victor in nearly every one of these high-stakes contests.
China's victories have only served to embolden it further. Recent overtures by China seeking to lock in large-scale, long-term commitments from Arabian oil producers are a passive-aggressive way of tweaking the U.S.'s nose in the ever-escalating contest for oil.
Make no mistake about it: In the wake of China's surging demand for energy, the scramble for the oil is a high-stakes contest, and the timing couldn't be worse because major oil fields around the globe are already in decline, with no new discoveries to replace them.

Here's just a small sampling of the grim news:

• Texan oil fields hit peak production decades ago.
 
• Next was the North Sea, now depleting at about 15% per year.
 
• Last year, Kuwait admitted its super-giant Burgan oil field was in decline.
 
• Mexico confessed that its super-giant Cantarell oil field is in an irreversible decline.
 
• The U.S. has no significant active oil exploration program to increase domestic production. And though the House of Reps voted to end the moratorium on offshore drilling, even if it becomes legally possible, it will take years to get a full-scale drilling program in place.
 
• India Gobbles Up Metals
 
India is the de-facto back office to the world. Since Y2K, the citizens of India have been building call centers, office towers, technology parks, and corporate campuses at breakneck speed.
To keep attracting those lucrative overseas contracts, however, India must continue to bring its inadequate infrastructure up to speed. An estimated $21 billion a year for the next 10 years is going into construction of highways, dams, water treatment plants, and nuclear energy facilities.
And as India solves its basic infrastructure problems such as reliable electrical power and transportation systems, its demand for resources is shooting up exponentially.
And just like China, India — population 1.1 billion — has a middle class that wants its share of the good life. With all the good jobs imported from overseas, young Indian workers are snatching up consumer goods, electronics, and gold and silver jewelry — driving up demand for precious and industrial metals even further.
China and India are just two of the four BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) that represent a formidable economic force. The BRIC economies' share of world growth is projected to double in less than 20 years, reaching over 40% by 2025.
And throughout Southeast Asia, increasing economic growth rates are ramping up demand for resources.
Miners Gasp to Keep up the Pace
Across the globe, precious and industrial metals can't be pulled out of the ground fast enough. Worldwide, mines are starting to show their age. The pace of production lags significantly behind demand. For instance ...
 
Oil: It seems the more the giants grow and the greater their appetite for energy ... the more threats we see to the available supplies — in the Persian Gulf, in Nigeria, Venezuela and elsewhere. Oil is on a collision course. And nothing can seem to avert it.
 
Gold: Production in South Africa, the world's premier gold producer, recently hit its lowest level since 1923 (296.3 tons). Demand — both from industry and investors — is surging.
 
Silver: Above-ground stockpiles are dwindling, from over 220 billion ounces several years ago to probably less than 300 million ounces today. Mining cannot keep up with demand.
 
Copper: Despite soaring prices, many mines in South America are closing down. This means they are simply worked out.
 
Lead: Chinese demand has been surging. Meanwhile, global mine output only meets half of demand.
 
Uranium: And perhaps most pressing of all, there's a chronic and acute shortage of uranium. Within the next decade, that supply-demand gap could widen to 20 million pounds!
 
Got A Spare Planet (or Two or Three), Anyone?
 
According to The Worldwatch Institute, if China and India were to consume resources at the current U.S. per capita level, it would require two planet Earths just to sustain their economies.
I calculate that if other nations wanted to live the same way, we'd need yet another Earth. That makes four — the one we're using now, plus three more to meet escalating demand.
That's why a global struggle for resources is likely to define the 21st century.
Every war has its winners and losers. Just make sure you're on the winning side.”
 
* This dissertation is from Money and Markets “Growing Wealthy With Reasources” by Sean Brodrick