Titanium and the Tsunami

According to the April, 2005, issue of Discover magazine, the December 26, 2004, tsunami washed tonnes of titanium ore up onto the beaches of India [h/t to BrianF].

The December 26 tsunami that killed more than 250,000 people in southern Asia and Africa brought India a macabre windfall: tons of titanium ore, worth untold millions of dollars, deposited along more than 300 miles of shoreline. The deposits—as high as 10 feet in some places—were left on sand dunes about a mile inshore, significantly adding to the titanium ore already there. The Times of India speculates that more than 40 million tons landed on the coast, but Victor Loveson, a geologist for the Central Mining Research Institute, says it’s too early to make an accurate estimate.

According Richard Delevan,

Apparently a bizarre side effect of the tsunami in December was that it threw up 40 million tons of titanium ore onto the beaches of India. A rough calculation of the price (last pricing I could find was 1998, so any commodities traders do get in touch) of $4.38/lb would mean there's roughly $350 BILLION lying around on the beaches, which would roughly pay for all of the reconstruction work in every affected country, wouldn't it?

Really? If so, I would expect the spot price of titanium to drop (unless, concurrently, there has been some whoppingly huge and unanticipated increase in the demand). Yet, when I Googled "titanium" and "prices", all I could find were forecasts that the price of titanium is expected to rise perhaps as high as $8.50/lb over the next few years. And when I looked at CBSMarketWatch for any indication that spot or futures prices of titanium had dropped, all I could find were announcements that titanium prices are rising:

2:37pm 03/23/05 Kerr-McGee raises outlook for chemicals unit - Jim Jelter
3:55pm 03/22/05 DuPont to raise Ti-Pure price in Latin America April 1 - Heather Wilson
3:50pm 03/22/05 [DD] DUPONT TITANIUM TO RAISE TI-PURE PRICE $150 A TON
3:49pm 03/22/05 [DD] DUPONT TITANIUM TO UP PRICE ON TI-PURE IN LATIN AMERICA
6:02pm 03/18/05 Movers & Shakers: Highlights of rising and falling U.S. stocks - Michael Baron
10:23am 03/18/05 Altair Nanotechnologies shares rise on research data - Carolyn Pritchard
11:59am 03/16/05 Kerr-McGee to up titanium dioxide pigment prices - Carla Mozee
5:03pm 03/15/05 Kronos to up titanium dioxide grade prices worldwide - Chelsea Bellows
4:57pm 03/15/05 [KRO] KRONOS UPS TITANIUM DIOXIDE PRODUCT PRICES WORLDWIDE
11:11am 03/14/05 DuPont Titanium to raise titanium dioxide price 5c - Heather Wilson
11:07am 03/14/05 [DD] DUPONT TITANIUM TECH UPS TITANIUM DIOXIDE PRICE 5C

A little supply and demand could go a long way in helping to make sense of these widely divergent stories.