China

The race for Arctic riches is getting more crowded, with another player throwing its hat into the ring via Greenland as point of entry. According to a Reuters news story, a Korean state-owned company has inked an agreement with a Greenland mining firm “to seek opportunities for joint minerals projects, exploiting deposits of rare earths and other strategic metals” – a deal that “reflects growing Asian interest in the minerals of the North Atlantic island.”

Greenland has seen interest in its vast mineral resources perk up with recent visits from European Union officials and Chinese officials seeking cooperative agreements with the self-governing province of Denmark.

As American Resources principal Daniel McGroarty has pointed out:

For the U.S., our Arctic claims come via Alaska – a.k.a. Seward’s Folly, and perhaps the best $7.2 million ever spent by the U.S. Government. Across a range of metals and minerals, expect Alaska – and by extension, our Arctic claims – to play a key role in resource supply in the 21st century. Forget the folly: let’s make that William Seward, futurist.

With more and more potential stakeholders showing up in the Arctic, for the U.S. – and particularly when taking into account the benefits mineral exploration is already providing for the State of Alaska – fortifying its position on the Arctic stage and truly harnessing Alaska’s resource potential makes all the more sense.

While the EU, Japan and the United States have challenged China’s restrictive Rare Earths export policies before the World Trade Organization (WTO), German Chancellor Angela Merkel appears to have chosen a less confrontational route for Germany’s bilateral relationship with China.

During her state visit to China, Merkel offered to partner with Beijing in efforts to address environmental issues related to REE development – which China claims are the main reasons for its restrictive policies. Speaking at a conference in which both Chancellor Merkel, and Chinese Prime Minister Wen participated, President of the German Federation of Industries Ulrich Grillo reiterated that joining the WTO suit was not in Germany’s best interest. He did, however, voice concerns about distortions resulting from Chinese government control over the global REE market.

Raising the Rare Earths issue during the state visit is in line with Germany’s recent policy shift towards a more comprehensive mineral strategy and a more active role in the global race for resources. Having jumped into the REE pursuit at the beginning of the year with plans to develop a 38,000 tonnes deposit of Rare Earths in the East German state of Saxony, Germany has inked a cooperative REE development treaty with Mongolia and Kazakhstan, and is expected to partner with Russia to develop these precious resources as well.

Meanwhile, the recently formed “globally active profit-oriented raw materials corporation” called the “Alliance for Securing Raw Materials,” which enjoys the backing of the German federal government, is beginning to take concrete action, and may participate in a first project to explore and develop Rare Earths as early as this year.

With mineral supply issues affecting not only many of U.S. domestic manufacturers, but also our national security and economic wellbeing, one would think our policy makers in Washington, D.C. would place as much emphasis on addressing them. Thus far, Berlin is ahead of Washington in framing out a strategic policy concerning strategic metals.

The global race for resources is heating up, with the latest frontier being the seabed beneath the world’s oceans. Last year’s discovery of significant Rare Earth deposits by Japanese researchers on the seabed of the Pacific Ocean seems to have set of a flurry of activity on the part of countries trying to gain access [...]

While most Rare Earths-related stories focus on China these days, there’s no denying that the race for critical mineral resources has arrived on the North American continent. As the Fairbanks Daily News Miner reports, Alaska State geologists are excited by the findings of recent mineral cataloguing efforts, with a new $3 million program underway. The [...]

A REE World Report titled ‘Political Squeeze Play and the Rare Earth Revolution’ on Rare Metal Blog highlights the implications of U.S. dependency on foreign supplies of Rare Earths for our military. Here are some of the report’s key points: • The current WTO case brought on against China by the U.S., European Union and [...]

China has announced a series of moves designed to place additional controls on global rare earth metal supply. Meanwhile, U.S. Federal and state policymakers continue to dither over domestic mining policy initiatives. According to the National Mining Association, the US has $6.2 trillion dollars of mineral reserves, but it also has one of the slowest [...]

Earlier this year, a Department of Defense analysis stunned many with its conclusion that concerns about Rare Earths supply shortages were exaggerated. Jeffery A. Green, founder of the Strategic Material Advisory Council and American Resources expert, explains how the Pentagon misses the mark in its assessment in a new policy brief for the Center for [...]

News of China opening its first rare earths spot trading platform has reached us via IndustrialMinerals (IndMin), the London-based publishing and research house focusing on non-metallic minerals pricing and business information, and intellectual home for Simon Moores, the latest addition to the American Resources expert panel. Here’s how IndMin’s Laura Syrett breaks down the news [...]

China’s suspension of Rare Earth shipments to Japan in the fall of 2010 kicked off a firestorm and has largely contributed to the extensive media coverage Rare Earth supply issues have received in recent months. While shipments were since resumed, reports that Japan is diversifying its supply sources have surfaced from time to time. But [...]

U.S. Representative Mike Amodei (R, Nev.), sponsor of a bill that seeks to reduce red tape for mining permits and reduce our over-reliance on foreign mineral resources, takes on the rigid U.S. permitting process in a column for the Reno Gazette Journal. Invoking the authoritative Behre Dolbear “Country Rankings for Mining Investment” report, also dubbed [...]