http://www.stockhouse.com/Columnists/2011/May/18/Vanadium--Critical-to-U-S--industry

Heightened global demand for vanadium, especially from China, is prompting the global steel industry to aggressively seek out new supplies, especially in the U.S. where this 21st century metal is becoming increasingly indispensible. Even U.S. President Obama is championing this metal’s promise for green energy applications.

Currently the U.S. imports virtually all of its vanadium needs, which is critical for domestic production of high-quality steel, including specialty steels for aerospace and military applications, while it also enables the mass storage of renewable energy and powers the next-generation of lithium batteries.

Market forces are set to make vanadium one of the most important commodities of the 21st century.

“Without doubt, vanadium is growing into one of the most important metals about which no one has ever heard,” he says.

“Soon, everyone is likely to become a lot more knowledgeable about vanadium, and investors can benefit by staying ahead of the curve and owning companies that can benefit from rapidly increasing vanadium demand.”

Vanadium’s increasing importance to industry and growing cachet among investors is largely due to the fact that it has established itself as a critical element for renewable energy storage. It’s also integral to the adoption of high performance lithium vanadium batteries for the automotive and mobile power sectors.

That said, vanadium’s traditional usage as a metal that strengthens and hardens alloys like steel is also fuelling a surge in demand, especially among emerging economic superpowers like China. Already, the steel industry consumes about 92% of the world’s annual vanadium supply.

In fact, the world’s steel industry is already currently constrained by the fact that there simply is not enough vanadium to meet existing demand. In particular, new building structures are reliant on the metal’s strengthening properties to safeguard against dangers such as earthquakes.

However, the majority of world’s vanadium is produced in only three countries -- Russia, China and South Africa. And if a booming steel industry is increasingly forced to compete for supplies with a fast-emerging global industry for renewable green energy, especially in the U.S., then there will be an even greater need to bring domestic American supplies on-stream.

“In particular, the U.S. steel industry is increasingly interested in locking-in cost-efficient long term supplies, especially as they’re showing growing concerns about security of supplies,” he says.

“This is especially the case with the recent indications that China will dramatically increase their vanadium needs for steel, so much so that China may no longer be an exporter and instead may become an importer,” Radvak adds. “Not only will this scenario put a major squeeze on global supplies, but it will also likely increase the price of the metal.”

Paramount to America’s needs to lock-in future vanadium supplies in the metal’s application for renewable energy. In fact, vanadium has been hailed by the Obama Administration as a game-changing future driver of next-generation mass storage batteries, which are integral to the U.S. economy’s “green revolution.”

Large-scale adoption of clean, renewable energy is dependent on having grid level energy storage solutions and the U.S. government is already funding such initiatives. In a recent speech, President Obama acknowledged vanadium flow batteries as an important part of improving energy efficiency by facilitating clean energy storage for the first time ever.

Around the globe a handful of small vanadium developers are also hard at work trying to commercialize their own discoveries.

Only to say BMK has it!!! And it will be probably taken over sooner than we think, like FWR but hopefully for higher sp than FWR. And Canada must think also about Vanadium properties as strategical metal for Canada. So this was very good step from BMK in the right direction. I see in the futue much much higher prices, just wait for Vanadium mania and BMK to be part of that mania so 1$+ sp is real with BMK and hopefully it will be not taken over for some rediculous price like FWR.

GLTA