Other mined materials, such as coal and copper, ha

Other mined materials, such as coal and copper, have the same struggles. Coal demand will grow 65 percent through 2035 as the developing world uses more power, said Greg Boyce, chairman and CEO of St. Louis-based coal miner Peabody Energy. But the industry will grapple with public policies, access to coal resources and infrastructure costs along the way, Boyce said.

And thanks to challenges such as declining ore grades, "very complex" permitting and the availability of water and power for processing, the balance between copper supply and demand is razor-thin, said Red Conger, president of Phoenix-based Freeport-McMoRan Americas. The world has about a week of copper stores on hand, Conger said.

Worse still, the industry has fewer workers to wrestle with those challenges. The industry "missed a whole generation of people in the '90s" who decided to go into technology and banking, O'Brien said. Newmont has 500 mining engineers worldwide who are eligible to retire in the next five years. The company could hire every college mining graduate in the United States, and it wouldn't be able to replace those engineers, O'Brien said.

The quote comes from the CEO of Newmont made last month at the premier mining trade show, MINExpo. Even small mines in the US these days take well over a decade to open.

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