Molycorp Minerals

Only two major supplies of ore that yield rare earth metals are known to exist. The Chinese operate the Baiyun Obo mine in Inner Mongolia, and Molycorp Minerals in California resumed mining operations on November 1, 2010, after an eight year shutdown due to environmental and permit problems. As rare earths become crucial materials for more high-tech devices every year, a strong and environmentally safe supply will be demanded by the world. Molycorp aspires to help return diversity to those rare earth metals supplies.

History

Molycorp is settled on the Mountain Pass site where, in 1949, a pair of uranium prospectors stumbled across a strange Geiger counter signature in an unfamiliar material. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) analyzed the material and determined that the prospectors had found bastnesitean ore rich in rare earth metals such as neodymium.

The prospectors soon sold their claims to the Molybdenum Corporation of America, which renamed to Molycorp, Inc. in 1974 and was soon bought up by Union Oil of California. By 1990, Mountain Pass was supplying roughly 40% of world demand for rare earth metals.

Bastnasite mining ceased in 2002 due to facility limitations; no permit work had been finalized to expand the necessary components of the mine to continue work, so Molycorp was forced to halt operations. The permits were cleared in 2004, and the company was soon acquired by Chevron Mining. In 2008, a group of investors backed Molycorp Minerals, a newly formed private corporation, in its purchase of Mountain Pass from Chevron. The group took the company public on July 28, 2010; the IPO raised $394 million in equity badly needed for the company to expand the mine.

Products

Molycorp's top-level product is bastnasite, which is a mixture of rare earth metals in their flurocarbonate form. From this ore, mischmetal can be extracted. Alternatively, bastnasite can be used in the later purification processes of many rare earth metals. Bastnasite also serves as a high-performance polishing product for optics and sensitive equipment.

In various commercial grades of purity, Molycorp also sells compounds of:

• Cerium
• Lanthanum
• Praseodymium
• Neodymium
• Europium
• Gadolinium
• Samarium
• Terbium
• Erbium
• Ytterbium

Strategic US Importance

On April 14, 2010, the United States Government Accountability Office issued a briefing explaining not only the importance of rare earth metals to the Department of Defense, but also the foreign dominance of China over their supply.

According to the report and to Molycorp, rare earths are critical to many defense applications, such as:

• Precision guided (or "smart") bombs
• Underwater mine detection equipment
• Radar systeme
• Jet engine coatings
• Optics and scopes
• Lasers
• Electronic counter measures

Rare earth metals are also required to make high-efficiency magnets for cell phones, hybrid cars, wind turbines and many other consumer devices, leaving Molycorp a critical element of our nation's technology supply chain.