Saturday, July 24, 2010

Rush On for 'Rare Earths' as U.S. Firms Seek to Counter Chinese Monopoly

The REE market should start to gain traction this Fall as the Molycorp IPO news and the recent news of China restrictions on REE exports begins to translate into higher share prices for the Canadian juniors in the REE space. I own a basket of 4 companies including RA, QRE, CIN and MAT. All are near their 52 week lows and ready for 200-300% gains by the end of the year similar to last years move higher.

By PHIL TAYLOR of Greenwire

Published: July 23, 2010

MOUNTAIN PASS, Calif. -- About an hour's drive southwest of Las Vegas, on a private 2,200-acre desert patch flanked by Clark Mountain and the Mojave National Preserve, lies an idled mine many consider to be a linchpin in the U.S. push for energy independence and national security.

The Mountain Pass mine, once the world's leading producer of "rare earth" minerals used to manufacture cutting-edge weapons and clean energy technologies, shuttered operations here in 2002 after Chinese producers undercut its prices and a series of environmental spills stalled the renewal of state mining permits.

Today, the mine musters a limited production of rare earth oxides from ore mined years ago from a massive open pit hewn from the arid terrain.

But even that material must be shipped to Asian manufacturing plants equipped with the technology and know-how to process the oxides into metals and alloys to create new high-performance products, many of which are shipped back to the United States in the form of permanent magnets used in products such as wind turbines, hybrid electric vehicle motors, military radar equipment or precision-guided munitions.

Read more here.

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