on a brighter note

Combined with yesterdays futures jump to US40000 per tonne (3 months futures)- Molybdenum Oxide just went up US$1 to US$17 a 6% rise in Europe.

So fingers crossed a few decent rises will bring back interest into Moly stocks round aboubt mid April when MOL anticipates something more important.

Anyways for those a little lost this weekend...

http://asia.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20100324/tbs-china-molybdenum-21231dd.html
"China 2010 molybdenum demand seen up 13 pct, output up
Reuters - Thursday, March 25 2010
China molybdenum output, demand seen rising in 2010

* Current molybdenum stocks seen at 45,000 T in China

By Polly Yam

HONG KONG, March 24 - China's consumption of molybdenum, an additive used to stregthen steel, may rise 13 percent on the year in 2010, a senior executive at the country's top producer of the metal said on Wednesday.

But a rise in production may outstrip the growth in consumption and the country would need exports to digest the domestic surplus, said Wang Bin, deputy general manager for China Molybdenum <3993.HK>, which is the world's fourth-biggest producer of the metal.

"Production may rise to 90,000 tonnes of molybdenum metal in 2010," Wang told Reuters on the sidelines of Metal Bulletin's minor metals conference in Hong Kong.

Output was about 73,000 tonnes of metal last year, based on the company's estimate, he said.

Wang said he expected international molybdenum prices to rise this year from 2009 when the price was $11.12 a pound on an average. Higher prices could spur producers to make more, Wang added.

Spot molybdenum oxide was quoted at $16.7 on March 19 in Europe.

Wang said low prices in the international market had driven up China's imports of molybdenum last year, adding about 45,000 tonnes of molybdenum may be stored in private warehouses in China currently, about two-thirds of the annual consumption.

China's molybdenum consumption stood about 61,200 tonnes of metal last year and demand should rise 13 percent on the year in 2010, Wang said.

About 25 percent of China's molybdenum supplies was consumed by stainless steel mills, he added.

Wang said the use of molybdenum in stainless steel production in China, the world's top producing nation of that anti-corrosive steel, should rise given only 3 percent of the country's stainless steel production used molybdenum currently.

Nickel-based stainless steel is more popular in China."

AND for climate change - what Molybdenum again?
From PrincetonEduc.com

"Princeton-led team finds secret ingredient for the health of tropical rainforests
Posted December 9, 2008; 09:00 a.m.
printby Kitta MacPhersonA team of researchers led by Princeton University scientists has found for the first time that tropical rainforests, a vital part of the Earth's ecosystem, rely on the rare trace element molybdenum to capture the nitrogen fertilizer needed to support their wildly productive growth. Most of the nitrogen that supports the rapid, lush growth of rainforests comes from tiny bacteria that can turn nitrogen in the air into fertilizer in the soil.

Until now, scientists had thought that phosphorus was the key element supporting the prodigious expansion of rainforests, according to Lars Hedin, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University who led the research. But an experiment testing the effects of various elements on test plots in lowland rainforests on the Gigante Peninsula in the Barro Colorado Nature Monument in Panama showed that areas treated with molybdenum withdrew more nitrogen from the atmosphere than other elements.

"We were surprised," said Hedin, who is also a professor in the Princeton Environmental Institute. "It's not what we were expecting."

The report, detailed in the Dec. 7 online edition of Nature Geoscience, will be the journal's cover story in its print edition.

Molybdenum, the team found, is essential for controlling the biological conversion of nitrogen in the atmosphere into natural soil nitrogen fertilizer, which in turn spurs plant growth. "Just like trace amounts of vitamins are essential for human health, this exceedingly rare trace metal is indispensable for the vital function of tropical rainforests in the larger Earth system," Hedin said. Molybdenum is 10,000 times less abundant than phosphorus and other major nutrients in these ecosystems.

The discovery has implications for global climate change policy, the scientists said. Previously, researchers knew little about rainforests' capacity to absorb the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. If molybdenum is central to the biochemical processes involved in the uptake of carbon dioxide, then there may be limits to how much carbon that tropical rainforests can absorb.

The biological enzyme, nitrogenase, which converts atmospheric nitrogen into soil fertilizer, feeds on molybdenum, the researchers found. "Nitrogenase without molybdenum is like a car engine without spark plugs," said Alexander Barron, the lead author on the paper, who was a graduate student in Hedin's laboratory and earned his Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology from Princeton in 2007 and who now is working on climate legislation in Congress.

Molybdenum, a lustrous, silvery metal, is found in soil, rock and sea water and in a range of enzymes vital to human health. Traces of the element have been found in Japanese swords dating back to the 14th century. In modern times, its high strength, good electrical conductivity and anticorrosive properties have made molybdenum desirable as an element of rocket engines, radiation shields, light bulb filaments and circuit boards.(PLUS more than few hundred other uses)

The research was conducted with support from the National Science Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Smithsonian Scholarly Studies program, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute student fellowship program and the Environmental Protection Agency student fellowship program."