The Vancouver junior shaking up the lithium mining industry

In the race to make electric cars a viable alternative to internal combustion engines, Nissan announced that it had developed technology to charge a car in 10-minutes. The time it takes to charge a car is seen as a major hurdle to widespread acceptance of electric cars. With the current technology, it can take several hours to recharge an electric car. Kansai University in Japan is credited with inventing the technology.

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwire - Oct. 20, 2011) - Quantum Rare Earth Developments Corp. (TSX VENTURE:QRE)(OTCQX:QREDF)(FRANKFURT:BR3) (http://www.quantumrareearth.com/) CEO Peter Dickie is calling for the U.S. to accelerate effor...

U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO), who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, is pushing the US Department of Defense for the establishment of a national inventory of rare earth materials. “I support the procurement of such high-demand, at-risk rare earth materials to help fulfill Department of Defense (DOD) requirements and therefore reduce supply-chain vulnerability. By using the Annual Materials Plans as a vehicle, the Department can identify critical rare earth oxides, alloys, metals, or magnets, depending on what best suits DOD’s needs, and then fulfill a portion or the entirety of the associated requirements,” Coffman wrote in a letter to Ronnie Favors, the administrator of the DLA Strategic Materials.

IAMGOLD Corporation, which produces nearly one million ounces of gold each year, is looking is looking for projects capable of 150,000/oz of gold per year and has two million oz of reserves. The company made the announcement during a corporate presentation in October. Bloomberg reported that the company is looking for transactions in the range of $300 million to $500 million.

Reuters reports China will extend a resource tax – calculated on value rather than volume of production – on domestic sales of crude oil and natural gas from some regions to the whole country and expand the list of taxable resources to coking coal and rare earths from November 1. The move, billed as a way of conserving resources and limiting environmental damage, is part of a long-awaited tax reform that would enrich the coffers of local governments but slash the earnings of resource companies, such as PetroChina Co, China National Petroleum Corp and Baotou Steel Rare Earths by billions of dollars each year. The tax on rare-earth ores will be levied according to a wide range of between yuan 0.4 – 60 per ton and between yuan 8 – 20 a tonne on coking coal.

Canasia Industries Corporation ("Canasia" and the "Company") (TSX VENTURE:CAJ)(PINK SHEETS:CANSF)(FRANKFURT:45C) wishes to announce that it has increased its rare earth acreage in the vicinity of the Eldor Discovery in Quebec. 3,600 additional acres were acquired through Gestim, which now brings Canasia's total to 7,198 contiguous acres prospective for rare earth. On September 28, 2011, Canasia announced that the bulk sample program on the Clone Gold Prospect had been completed for the 2011 season.

Subsitution is driving rare earth demand down, according to analyst Dudley Kingsnorth speaking at an industry conference in China. Kingsnorth is executive director of Industrial Minerals Company of Australia. Dudley told the Metal-Pages(TM) Minor Metals and Rare Earth Conference in Beijing last September that he is dropping projected demand of rare earth oxide per annum to 170,000 tonnes from a previous forecast of 195,000. For example manufacturers of rechargeable batteries may start using lithium ion materials instead of a nickel-metal hydrid, which uses the light rare earth lanthanum.

Nautilus Minerals (TSE:NUS), a Toronto-based miner seeking to extract minerals from the ocean floor, uploaded some multimedia showing how it will mine the sea floor. The company is exploring for copper, gold, silver and zinc in seafloor massive sulphide (SMS) deposits, equivalent to land-based volcanogenic massive sulphide deposits such as Kidd Creek in Canada. The company's main focus is Solwara 1 Project, located off Papua New Guinea in the western Pacific Ocean. The mineralised zone is about 1.3 km long and up to 200 m wide. It has been drilled up to depths of 19 m below the seafloor. Water depth is approximately 1600m.

The price of the most abundant rare-earths are set to extend their decline from records this year as Japanese manufacturers, including Toyota the world’s top REE consumer, switch to recycled materials or eliminate the need for REEs altogether. Prices of certain elements such as cerium used to polish TV screens and lenses are already down 40% after months of break-neck price hikes while lanthanum which finds its way into nickel-metal hydride batteries has shown similar declines. However, the price of some REEs such as samarium used in jet fighter electrical systems are showing no signs of decline despite increasing 25-fold in just three years.