West Virginia University received a grant from the US Department of Energy to develop a pre-commercial demonstration facility for separating and refining rare earth elements from acid mine drainage and coal waste.
Saudi Arabia has spent more than $37 million since 2017 searching for deposits but only managed to identify reserves that would be “severely uneconomic” to mine.
The Imbabura provincial court said a 2014 environmental license and other permissions given for the Llurimagua project do not comply with proper parameters.