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Ahead of the G20 summit in South Korea business leaders from the US and Europe urge the leaders of the worlds largest economy to spark debate over rare earth policy.
By Michael Montgomery—Exclusive to Rare Earth Investing News
The tone of the summit is to be set largely by claims currency manipulation in the wake of the Federal Reserve’s decision to increasing quantitative easing with bond purchases, as well as Chinese currency manipulation. Whether or not rare earth policy will be discussed is still unknown, but has been a major issue in the last few weeks with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
China is not likely to be persuaded by the argument. This is due to the fact that Chinese officials insist that export policies are based on an attempt to mitigate the environmental damages sustained in the mining of rare earth elements. The Chinese are also not likely to listen to arguments from G20 leaders that themselves have instituted protectionist policies over the last year. “G-20 members have imposed 94 protectionist measures, compared with 44 by countries not part of the G-20,” reposted John W. Miller, for The Wall Street Journal.
Many rumors have been floating around over further reductions to export quotas from China. Chinese officials have repeatedly denied such claims as was reported last week on Rare Earth Investing News. However, a new statement from the Commerce Ministry has verified that the initial claims were in fact valid. Yao Jin, a spokesman for the ministry stated that export quotas for 2011 will be reduced, however, the initial reports of a further reduction of 30 percent may have been to high.
“Given that we’ve already had major reductions in export quotas over recent years, the extent of the fall in China’s rare earth export volumes next year will not be great,” stated Yao Jin, Commerce Ministry spokesman.
Given the recent statement by Chinese officials, rare earth policy may be on the agenda during the G20 talks as the importance of the metals for the renewable energy revolution as well as the high tech market are of vital importance for the world’s largest economies. Stay Tuned.
Rare Earth Market News
State run mining consortium, Korea Resources Corp. discovered a rare earth deposit while working on an iron ore mine in eastern South Korea. While the size of the deposit is currently unknown, and unidentified source at the company stated “The deposit in Gangwon contains a large quantity of rare metal reserves and will be in production in 2012,” reported Shinhye Kang, for Bloomberg.
The discovery of rare earths in South Korea may be a godsend for the planned creation of massive wind farms on the nation’s southwest coast. The plan is to generate 2,500 megawatts of electrical power by 2019. The turbines will be constructed by Hyundai Heavy Industries and Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering. The discovery of rare earths, if mined quickly enough should lower the overall cost of the project.
Researchers in the U.S. at Ames National Laboratory have developed a new process to produce neodymium magnets economically and in an environmentally manner in the United States. The new refining technique uses a one step process that eliminates the toxics chemicals traditionally used to create the magnets.
“It is a one-step process going from the neodymium oxide to the neodymium master alloy, and since the end-products are completely utilized, there are no waste materials to dispose of,” explained Karl A. Gschneidner Jr., senior metallurgist at Ames Lab. This new process may even be applicable in the creation of lanthanum nickel metal hydride batteries, used in hybrid cars. These magnets and batteries are also essential for renewable energy technologies in wind turbines, and the storage of that energy created.