From the category archives:

China

Shortage Of Rare Earth Elements Could Thwart Innovation

by Admin February 16, 2010

by Jeremy Hsu – LIVESCIENCE – Published: Feb 16, 2010
Silicon may represent one of Earth’s more common elements, but it transformed Silicon Valley into a high-tech corridor and helped usher the world into the Information Age.
Now rare earth elements with exotic names such as europium and tantalum hold the key to hybrid cars, wind turbines [...]

Read the full article →

Going For A Rare Find

by Admin February 11, 2010

by Larry MacDonald – CTV NEWS & THE GLOBE AND MAIL – Published: Feb 11, 2010
The Big Picture
The rare-earth elements – supply and demand have “a wild dynamic.”
Introduction
There are 16 rare-earth elements on the periodic table. Many of them, particularly neodymium, dysprosium, lanthanum, terbium and europium, are used to make specialized magnets, phosphors and other [...]

Read the full article →

On The Green Road: Cape Town Capers II – South African Rare Earths As Part Of The Global Picture

by Jack Lifton February 8, 2010

On Friday, February 5, I flew from Cape Town in a small plane, to Springbok, Northern Cape Province, Republic of South Africa, to visit a privately-owned rare earth exploration site there. I was impressed by two aspects of the deposits that the owners had discovered so far:

The grades presented were as high as 21%, and
the [...]

Read the full article →

Rare Earth Deposit Holdings Of Utah-Based U.S. Rare Earths, Inc. Ranked Highly In Global Listing By The U.S. Geological Survey

by Admin February 4, 2010

February 4, 2010 – SALT LAKE CITY–(BUSINESS WIRE)– U.S. Rare Earths, Inc. (www.usrareearths.com), a privately owned company, announced today that its rare earth element deposits in Idaho and Montana were listed as among the nation’s most important domestic deposits in the annual listing of the worldwide distribution of rare earth element deposits, produced by the U.S. [...]

Read the full article →

China’s CNNC Plans To Acquire Mongolian Uranium Resources For $53 Million

by Jack Lifton February 4, 2010

Reported at domain-b.com, this is a great story. A Russian and a Chinese company competing to buy a Mongolian uranium mine from a Canadian junior, while mighty Washington sleeps…
Continuing its acquisition spree for the world’s natural resources to fuel the development of the its fast-growing economy, another state-owned Chinese company, CNNC Overseas Uranium Holding Ltd [...]

Read the full article →

Could China Suspend American Independence Of Action Using Rare Metals Supply As A Tool Of Diplomacy?

by Jack Lifton February 3, 2010

You may have seen the story over the weekend on China’s suspension of military exchanges with the USA.
The geopolitics of natural resource geography may be about to rear its head for the first time since the Cold War ended. Perhaps a Cool War is now underway.  Americans currently in political power seem to have very short [...]

Read the full article →

The Rare Earth Crisis Of The Second Decade Of The Twenty-First Century: A Threat Or An Opportunity?

by Jack Lifton January 16, 2010

Allow me to pose a question: with regard to the rare earths, is there a global threat of supply interruption by China – or is any threat really due to a failure of the American way of doing business?
America was actually self-sufficient in its supply of rare earth metals until 2002. In that year, due [...]

Read the full article →

The Battle Over Rare Earth Metals

by Jack Lifton January 14, 2010

This article was originally published in the January 2010 issue of the Journal of Energy Security.
Rare earth metals are most simply defined as those chemical elements that have atomic numbers between 57 to 71. These include lanthanum, from which rare earth metals get their collective chemical name of lanthanides, to lutetium. For reasons of chemical [...]

Read the full article →

Concern As China Clamps Down On Rare Earth Exports

by Admin January 2, 2010

by Cahal Milmo – THE INDEPENDENT – Published: Jan 2, 2010
Britain and other Western countries risk running out of supplies of certain highly sought-after rare metals that are vital to a host of green technologies, amid growing evidence that China, which has a monopoly on global production, is set to choke off exports of valuable [...]

Read the full article →

The Veracity of Chinese Mining Statistics

by Jack Lifton December 28, 2009

In February of this year I gave a presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration (SME 2009) entitled “An Assessment Of The Reliability Of The Present Determination Of The Rare Earth Resources and Reserves Of The People’s Republic Of China“. The following is drawn from that presentation.
Laissez-faire capitalism is [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries