– I’ve said it before; as resources get scarce, it is going to get to be like a vicious game of musical chairs and each time the music stops for something essential, someone is going to find them self without.
– You’d have to be living under a rock to not have realized that this sort of thing is already going on with respect to oil, land to grow food and water.  And the games for these have only just begun.
– There are other lesser know commodities that are going to become very scarce and thus very expensive.  I’ve been following Helium and Lithium for the last year or more in this respect. Perhaps I’ll write something on each of these soon.
– Now we hear that China has quietly been cornering most of the world’s supply of rare earth ore.
– The world is going to get to be a pretty small and tough place before too very many years go by.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
The Chinese acquisition of stakes in Australian rare earth miners Lynas Corporation and Arafura Resources has “caught the rest of the world sleeping,” said Rod McIllree, managing director at Australian-based Greenland Minerals & Energy (GME).
Following two acquisitions in the past six months for an aggregate USD 163m, Korean, Japanese and Western players may find themselves locked out of the sector, McIllree told mergermarket. Speculation is rife as to what this may mean for the high tech and green industries that rely on rare earth metal resources. With over 90% of the global rare earth resource held by Chinese companies, the country’s monopoly looks unchallenged. The recent Australian acquisitions have brought China control of the majority of the rare earth deposits outside China.
Rare Earth metals are a collection of 17 different metals that occur within the same ore deposits. While China currently produces 95% of the worlds rare earth supply, the metals are also found in the US, Indonesia, Australia and South Africa. Rare earth metals are needed for the manufacturing of wind turbines, plasma televisions, mobile phones, hybrid car batteries meaning the Chinese monopoly could shift the high-tech manufacturing industry bases from Japan and Korea to China.
Acquisitions of Australian rare earth miners are strongly backed by the Chinese Government, a China-based industrial banker said. Since 2004, or even earlier, the Chinese government has treated rare earth resources as strategic. In order to protect the resources available to China, the government employs a three-pronged strategy; rare earth exports are restricted, imports encouraged, and outbound rare earth acquisitions actively encouraged.
More… ➡
– Hat tip to Cryptogon for making me aware of this story.