Issue link: http://resourceworld.uberflip.com/i/832998
8 www.resourceworld.com J U N E / J U L Y 2 0 1 7 Your first choice for business travel and events in Vancouver. With complimentary WiFi throughout, combined with a perfect locaaon for business and leisure. Your experience in Vancouver will be what you want, where you want. Contact us via Phone: 604-691-2780 Or by Email: vancouver.sales@pinnaclehotels.ca PINNACLE HOTEL HARBOURFRONT 1133 West Hassngs Street, Vancouver BC MEETPINNACLE.CA think those two factors mean that new mine supplies will begin to decrease. It's important to note that new mine supplies are a less important determinant of the gold price because most of the gold that's ever been mined still constitutes supply, but I think it does have profound implications for equity pricing in the gold business; less important to the bullion price, but very important to some share prices. RW: Do you think that investors should have some precious metals in their portfolio? RR: Absolutely. I think it depends on the nature of the investor, of course. I own physical precious metals because I consider them to be 'social catastrophe insurance.' I own them in the strange hope that they don't go up in price because a set of circumstances that would make them worth a lot of money would be deleterious to my life style. But it's difficult for me to imagine an investor who could afford to have precious metals as part of their portfolio who doesn't. I simply sleep better owning precious metals. RW: There's been almost a doubling of money raised for exploration in 2016 compared to 2015. Could a major discovery jump-start the Venture Exchange, à la Ekati or Voisey's Bay? RR: If you give a good salesman like me, use of the word 'could'; I could make anything happen. The truth is that explora- tion expenditures are still very low, and the exploration process is still very inefficient. The amount of money being raised is fairly insignificant relevant to exploration expenditures 10 or 15 years ago, and my experience has been that from the beginning of an exploration cycle, you can expect that cycle to bear fruit. It takes a very long period of time, so we could have some luck with money that was raised last year, but I'm reminded of the fact that, as an example, Carlin Trend exploration in Nevada began in earnest with the publication of that famous paper, Alignment of Mineral Deposits in Northeast Nevada, in the early 1970s. Those exploration expenditures really began to deliver exploration suc- cess 10 or 12 years later. Most speculators have too short a time frame in terms of their expectation of exploration success. It takes a long time and a lot of money and wears out most speculators before the real fruits of their success are enjoyed. RW: There appears to be a great deal of interest in the metals and minerals that go into lithium ion batteries, namely lithium, graphite, manganese and cobalt. Do you think investors should consider investing in companies targeting those commodities? RR: I think really sophisticated investors could have considered investing in them five years ago. My own belief is that the supply bottleneck that we have in lithium is really a consequence of the processing bottleneck, not a supply bottleneck. I think there's a lot of lithium in the world. That being said, we are aware of strate- gic interests by Chinese industrial groups acquiring high quality lithium deposits. So to the extent that very good world class dis-