USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries Scraper

Scrapes structured production, reserves, import-reliance, and pricing data from the USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries — the authoritative annual dataset covering ~85 critical and nonfuel minerals including lithium, cobalt, rare earth elements, graphite, nickel, and more.

Data is sourced directly from USGS ScienceBase data-release ZIPs and output as normalised long-format rows with commodity, year, metric, value, and unit.

What you get

Each row represents one commodity + year + metric observation. Salient rows contain US-centric statistics; World rows add country-level production and reserves.

Output fields:

Field	Description
commodity	Commodity name (e.g. "Lithium", "Cobalt", "Rare Earths")
commodity_code	USGS 5-letter code from filename (e.g. "lithi", "cobal", "rareee")
year	Data year
metric	Metric column name (e.g. "USprod_t", "Imports_t", "Price_dt", "NIR_pct")
value	Metric value as string — preserves qualifiers like ">50", "W" (withheld), "E" (estimated)
unit	Unit derived from metric suffix (metric tonnes, $/tonne, %, $/kg, count)
country	Country for world-production rows; blank for US salient rows
estimate_flag	USGS qualifier (E=estimated, W=withheld, NA=not available)
mcs_year	MCS annual release year (e.g. 2025)
source_zip	Dataset origin: Salient_Commodity_Data or World_Data
metadata_abstract	Commodity definition from FGDC XML metadata (salient rows only)

Key use cases

• Supply-chain risk analysis — track US net import reliance for critical minerals
• Investor research — historical production, price, and reserve trends for lithium, cobalt, REEs
• Policy briefings — world production by country for strategic materials
• ESG / compliance — identify dependency on concentrated mineral supply chains

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
maxItems	integer	all	Maximum records to return
commodity	string	all	Comma-separated filter (e.g. "lithium,cobalt,rare earths")
source_zip	select	all	all, salient (US stats), or world (country production/reserves)
mcs_year	integer	2025	Which MCS annual release to fetch

Example output — salient row (lithium, US imports)

{
  "commodity": "Lithium",
  "commodity_code": "lithium",
  "year": 2024,
  "metric": "Imports_t",
  "value": "3430",
  "unit": "metric tonnes",
  "country": "",
  "estimate_flag": "",
  "mcs_year": 2025,
  "source_zip": "Salient_Commodity_Data",
  "metadata_abstract": "This data release contains the U.S. salient statistics and world production data extracted from the LITHIUM data sheet of the USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025."
}

Example output — world row (lithium reserves by country)

{
  "commodity": "Lithium",
  "commodity_code": "",
  "year": 2024,
  "metric": "Mine production, lithium content_reserves_2024",
  "value": "1800000",
  "unit": "metric tons",
  "country": "United States",
  "estimate_flag": "",
  "mcs_year": 2025,
  "source_zip": "World_Data",
  "metadata_abstract": ""
}

Data coverage

• ~85 commodities including all US-designated critical minerals
• 5 years of salient data per commodity (typically 2020–2024)
• 1,250+ world production/reserve rows across dozens of countries per commodity
• Annual update cadence — new MCS release typically published each January

Technical notes

• No proxy required — USGS ScienceBase is a US government open-data portal
• Downloads ZIPs in-memory; typical run completes in under 30 seconds
• Memory: 512 MB

Data source

USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025 Data Release Published by the USGS National Minerals Information Center.