Column: Electric dreams turn into a nightmare for battery metals
A sector that was once racing to build new supply has been closing mines and deferring projects as low prices bite into the cost curve.
Colorado Republican congressman Mike Coffman managed to tie together a popular video game, US President Barack Obama and rare earth mining in an op-ed published in The Washington Times last week.
Even by the not very high standards of current US political discourse, Coffman’s polemic is a little thin on logic.
Call of Duty: Black Ops II is set to break sales records when it goes on sale later this year and the latest installment of the war game features a storyline where America is pitted against China over the supply of rare earth elements.
China mines roughly 95% of the world’s rare earths, used in critical components of the automotive, high tech, green energy and defence industries.
Coffman writes “although players have many options to win in the game, it is unclear whether the Obama administration, which is neglecting proven mining and development strategies that could develop a domestic rare earth supply, is playing to win in the real world.”
While Obama’s relationship with the resource sector is not a happy one – vide the scraps with the coal lobby, oil pipelines and the uranium mining ban – weak links in the rare earth supply chain can hardly be blamed on his administration.
The fact is domestic supply is being developed. Molycorp, a company in Coffman’s home state is in the process of restarting full-scale mining and processing at its Mountain Pass rare earth mine in California.
Last week Molycorp announced it is already halfway in reaching its ultimate production target of 40,000 tonnes per annum and at the same time increased reserves 36%.
China’s export restriction on rare earths is currently before the World Trade Organization after the EU, Japan and the US complained (Coffman says the WTO action is just a way for Obama to avoid the real issue). The export quota in question is 31,130 tonnes per annum.
A single US mine could therefore make up any supply shortfall even if China stops all rare earth oxides at its border.
Coffman is also of the opinion that Molycorp’s mould-breaking deal with Neo Material Technologies, a rare earth and metal processor, is a bad idea because Neo Material sells to China which is also the number one consumer of rare earths.
“They then would be subject to Chinese export restrictions should U.S. industry need them back. Whether they would be allowed to return to the United States remains an open question,” writes the congressman.
Based on this reasoning what also remains an open question is whether Coffman thinks the US should not export its domestic supply. It’s an irony that would not be lost on the Chinese.
In a plot twist that may stretch credulity even in a shoot-em up video game, Coffman also calls into question an official report from the Pentagon that showed that even at the height China’s clampdown US defence contractors never faced a shortage of rare earths.
The truth of the matter is that the one force that is really at work in the rare earth industry is a collapse in prices.
The declines in rare earth oxide prices have accelerated this year with some more abundant rare earth elements such as lanthanum crashing by more than 70%. While heavy and scarcer REEs such as dysprosium have generally held up better, many have also experienced price declines of 50% or more.
If Obama is guilty of neglecting rare earth mining, it is benign neglect. And the correction in prices is a sign that the free market is at work in the rare earth industry. Something that should please your average Republican member of congress.
2 Comments
Dablobis469
While the reopening of the Mt Pass Mine, will help with short-term REE supplies, this mine, I believe, is very much a Light REE deposit, and produces very little of the much more valuable and useful to the advanced electronics industry Heavy REEs. Hence, it does little to buffer the any problems with supply coming out of China–there just no eggs in that basket.
Chris Tingus
It is imperative that immediate US policy be adopted by borth sides of the Congressional aisle to thwart any further opportunity if at all possible to allow China to surpass even its own projected “Rare Earths Industry Development Plan 2009-1015” and to take a dominant position in rare earths.
As an International business development consultant in the coal and iron ore mining sector as well as very much involved in rare earths, oil, biodiesel and other fuels and energy related initiatives, “sleep Hollow” and the “Beltway Bandits” have allowed China to store hoardes of commodtites and with stockpiles to march them into the 22nd century, let no one second guess just why China w/its scientific and engineering led leadership knowing full well the value of an array of commodities and rare earths.
It is so, so disheartening to see our beloved Republic and even our Constitution, besieged by this Goldman Sachs WH, falter so and now again in just the coming weeks, fall into a double dip recession w/oil costs and food costs expected to soar as much uncertainty will prevail and many an emty stomach and sleepless nights promised by this charade and self-serving agenda of the elitists.
Winston Churchill is no longer to be founded. Leadership is void. Scientific and engineering discipline in the west nearing extinction as we have been blinded by such ignorance….for we must control the rare earths markets, supply and pricing and if not too late, it is imperative that we begin to truly store commodities….for the future looks bleak at best and again as prices for food soar as well as gasoline prices exceeding $6 per gallon, enabling China to control these various markets will be to our final demise.
I beg the US and western industrial leaders to forge ahead together and whether in Greenland or deep below the ocean, distant to an asteroid, precious metals and other materials are essential to mankind’s evolving quest to seek new technologies and bring quality solutions to much of what has not been in the reach of previous generations.
It is strongly urged that the US Congress as well as the Canadian government begin to ambitiously support and eagerly pursue those rare earths which are available and to establish our own “Rare Earths Industry Dev’l Plan” and let us not waiver!
Christopher Tingus
PO Box 1612
Harwich, MA 02645
[email protected]