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Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Beijing, China - China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is calling for a total ban on exports of metals used in hi-tech products. China mines over 95 percent of the world's rare earth minerals.

The ministry's report, Rare Earths Industry Development Plan 2009-2015, says foreign shipments of terbium, dysprosium, yttrium, thulium, and lutetium should be blocked, while other metals such as neodymium, europium, cerium, and lanthanum will be subject to an export quota of 35,000 tons a year, far below the needs of the world's industry.

Terbium, a key component in the manufacture of low energy light bulbs, costs around $800,000 a ton. Neodymium is used in hard disk drives and electric motors, while Cerium is vital for catalytic convertors and Europium is used in lasers.

At the end of the last century, China effectively put other mineral producers out of business by flooding the market with cheap supplies and it will take several years before those operations - mainly in North America, South Africa and Australia - can come back on stream.

In the meantime, China - which consumes around 60 percent of the world's production of rare earth minerals - is sitting pretty.

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In 1997, Deng Xiaoping, the former general secretary of the Communist Party in China, announced that China would be, for rare earth metals, what the Middle East was for oil.

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China has large natural reserves of rare earth metals, mostly in Inner Mongolia and the global dominance in this area is the result of a 20 year plan to position China as the "OPEC of rare earth metals."

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http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/21812/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Pass,_California