Alarm bells are ringing on a vital issue of energy and economic security. Governments must take action if they hope to stave off damaging disruptions in industries ranging from power grids to jet engines.
Just over 50 years ago, the oil shock of 1973 triggered a staggering spike in gasoline prices in the United States, Europe, and beyond, straining economies and causing drastic fuel shortages. In response, governments came together, led by U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, to create the International Energy Agency (IEA). They established a mechanism to build up and pool emergency oil stocks to ensure they couldn’t be held to ransom via oil supplies in the future.
This landmark cooperation has proven its worth over the decades that followed, helping limit the economic impacts of oil supply disruptions caused by hurricanes or geopolitical strife. Energy supplies continue to be weaponized, as Russia did for natural gas deliveries to Europe at the time of its invasion of Ukraine. Europe was fortunately able to turn quickly to growing U.S. exports of liquified natural gas to help it weather the storm caused by the cuts in Russian supply.
This same thinking must now be applied to critical minerals.
On top of the ongoing risks in oil and natural gas markets, the world is facing new and emerging energy security hazards that governments must address. High on this list are the minerals that go into a wide range of technologies in the energy sector and beyond. These minerals are vital for power grids, batteries, and other energy equipment, but they are also needed for AI chips, jet engines, and defense applications. This makes them central not only to energy security but also to broader economic security.
These minerals are not directly used to run cars, generate electricity, or heat homes, so supply shortages don’t have the same immediate impacts as those for fuels like oil and gas. Yet disruptions to their supply can still cripple key manufacturing industries, with far-reaching consequences for economies and jobs. The recent scramble around rare earth exports provides a sobering example of the risks. When China tightened export controls in April, carmakers in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere faced immediate difficulties securing rare earth magnets needed for electric motors and other critical components, with some risking factory shutdowns if they failed to get access.
Diversification is the first golden rule of energy security. And on that front, the global picture for critical minerals is not a comforting one.
From key battery metals to high-tech materials, supplies of critical minerals are concentrated in a small handful of countries. For a remarkable 19 out of the 20 most important strategic minerals the IEA tracks closely—including gallium, graphite and rare earths—China is the leading refiner, with an average market share of 70%. And the IEA’s analysis shows that this concentration has only intensified in recent years.
As of today, more than half of these strategic minerals face some sort of export restriction or control, whether on the minerals themselves or the know-how that allows them to be incorporated into finished products.
Governments around the world are waking up to the risks of such high levels of concentration and they are searching for ways to respond. Action is needed both in the near term—to strengthen preparedness against potential disruptions—and over the longer term to diversify supply chains and reduce structural risks.
As with the oil market back in the 1970s, no single government has all the answers. But, as then, international cooperation can provide the way forward.
The IEA is the natural place for this. Over the past five years, we have invested heavily in building up our global data and analytical capabilities in critical minerals, mirroring the world-leading capacities that we have across other parts of the energy sector.
With the support of our member countries and drawing on our decades of experience and expertise with oil security mechanisms, we have built up a new Critical Minerals Security Program to promote coordinated action in the face of supply disruptions.
As with oil markets in the 1970s, the challenges are significant. Markets alone won’t deliver greater diversity. We need new policies and new international partnerships between resource-rich countries, refiners, capital providers, and consumers.
New tools to provide a degree of price or volume certainty will be needed to lower investment barriers and unlock financing. In July 2025, for example, the U.S. Department of Defense launched a landmark public-private partnership with MP Materials, involving equity investment, and commitments on a price floor and future purchasing to establish a fully domestic rare earths supply chain. The European Union, meanwhile, has designated 60 strategic projects, making them eligible for streamlined permitting and enhanced access to financing.
Ensuring economies can count on uninterrupted supplies of the critical minerals their industries need is a huge challenge. But with the spirit and focus that governments showed to create the IEA after the 1973 oil shock, we can shift the balance to a more secure economic and energy future.
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