Summary of supply, trade and demand information on mercury
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capacity in 2020. On average at decommissioning, around two metric tonnes of mercury may be recovered for each 1,000 metric tonnes of chlorine production capacity, freeing up some 12,000 metric tonnes of mercury, or an average of about 800 metric tonnes per year, between 2005 and 2020. 167. The total mercury demand (consumption) for operating chlor-alkali plants includes all mercury that goes into process wastes, some of which are later retorted (on-site or off-site) in order to recover the mercury. Any mercury recycled from wastes is included in the “recycled” category below. 168. Recycled mercury – Separate collection of mercury products may be expected to increase in coming years, but the quantity of mercury recovered from them will depend largely on legal requirements, the cost of alternative mercury waste disposal, etc. Under present regulations, the quantity of mercury recycled from products and wastes is expected to increase modestly. The recovery of mercury from spent VCM catalyst in China may be expected to increase more rapidly, if only because the consumption of mercury in this sector is expected to also increase significantly. 169. Mercury from stocks – Based on information from one of the key parties in contact with the sellers, the “Former Soviet Union” stocks made available in 2005 apparently comprise 500 metric tonnes of mercury in total (Masters, 2006). After this stock is sold, all known “government” stocks outside the United States of America will have been exhausted, although experience suggests that there may be other stocks that may come to market if the price of mercury is high enough. As mentioned in Section 3.1.3, in addition to mercury held by the U.S. government in long-term storage, the U.S. Department of Energy holds 1,306 metric tonnes of mercury, and has not yet decided what the final disposition of that stock will be. 170. In virtually all of the areas mentioned above, improved tracking and reporting of commercial mercury transfers would aid greatly in understanding and dealing with such developments and a range of other mercury issues – both national and global.
4 International trade in mercury 171. A full understanding of commercial flows of mercury begins with the details of flows inside a specific country, proceeds to a larger and more complete picture by examining flows between different countries, and generates a still more aggregated picture by investigating flows between different regions. A general appreciation of country and regional flows, as facilitated by this report, is an important foundation upon which Governments can build effective strategies and design specific measures to address the national and global mercury challenges mentioned in Section 1.
4.1
Overview of Comtrade mercury statistics
172. The details of commercial flows of mercury inside individual countries are generally sketchy, but as described in Section 2, the national trade statistics available through the UN COMTRADE database are quite extensive. 173. Since the COMTRADE database includes several tariff codes, in order to ensure the broadest possible coverage of statistical data, the SITC rev.2 tariff code was selected. Revision 2 was implemented in 1988; therefore, all subsequent mercury trade data, even if submitted under one of the HS tariff codes, for example, has been “translated” by the Comtrade software into SITC rev.2. On the other hand, if one searches the Comtrade database for mercury trades according to the HS2002 tariff codes, one does not see any of the trade data submitted (under HS or SITC codes) prior to 2002, since that data has not been “translated” forward into HS2002. 174. Under SITC rev.2, tariff 52216, a search was carried out for all national imports and exports of elemental mercury. Some 15,000 records were listed for the years 1995-2005 for 163 countries and legal areas – some of which do not routinely submit trade statistics to UNSD, but which are mentioned in submissions of their trading partners. It should be noted that a minor amount of data are entered with the abbreviation “nes,” which means “not elsewhere specified.” This refers to countries that are not specifically identified for political, commercial or other reasons. Also, since many data are submitted up to six months (and some even more) late, the 2005 data are incomplete. Likewise, it may be assumed that a relatively small percentage of 2004 data may also not yet be included in the statistics downloaded for this analysis. Otherwise these statistics appear to be the best available, under present reporting conditions, from any database with a global coverage.
4.1.1 Avoiding any misconceptions 175. In order to avoid any misconceptions about the Comtrade statistics and the use of those statistics in this report, several comments should be made.