2. All this has been accomplished in a world easier to live in than the kind of a world I foresee facing us in the decade ahead. Changes are taking place that will have an impact on both the miner and on his customers. Minerals are still a basic need and, as the world becomes increasingly industrialized, the appetite for minerals is growing rapidly, not only in the major industrial centers in the United States, Europe, and Japan, but percentage-wise even faster in the lesser developed countries. As the demand has grown in the highly industrialized areas, mineral production in those areas has failed to keep pace and the gap is widening as older mines are exhausted and as new discoveries become increasingly harder to come by in lands that over the years have been intensively explored. Even a country as well endowed as the United States is today self-sufficient in very few of the major minerals -- coal, molybdenum, and for the time being, uranium. We now must import sizeable quantities of bauxite, iron ore, copper, lead and zinc, and as a nation we will become increasingly dependent upon imported minerals for our needs. Yet, the situation is even more acute in Europe and Japan. Seeking minerals offshore is nothing new for the mining companies but now we are faced with different days. Once the mining companies felt relatively safe in prospecting and developing mineral properties wherever the geological promise was bright, for the investment was either sheltered by colonialism or eagerly welcomed by underdeveloped countries anxious to have their natural resources developed by those with the requisite capital and knowhow. But today the miner must approach his search for new mineral discoveries with abundant caution and the areas of the world that combine promising geology with a friendly investment climate are shrinking rapidly. Political instability and hostility to private investment rule out, except for those far braver