From Seeking Alpha comments to announcement, by Jack Lifton:"I...

From Seeking Alpha comments to announcement, by Jack Lifton:

"I would like to formally ask Molycorp from exactly where is this "heavy" rare earth concentrate coming? Also I would like the company, Molycorp, to define exactly which rare earth elements it considers to be "heavy rare earths."

The analysis of the bastnaesite deposit at Mountain Pass, which is gathered from Molycorp supplied data and is published for example at http://bit.ly/uy2hnD, shows only traces of what are generally known as the heavy rare earths. Molycorp itself said recently that it would only produce 7 tons of dysprosium if it could recover 100% of the dysprosium co-produced with 50,000 metric tons of the light rare earths from Mountain Pass. Has Molycorp filed a 43-101 compliant verification of an additional ore body on the Mountain Pass site that could produce any "significant" amount of heavy rare earths? I know there is samarium and a little (0.1% of the TREEs) europium in the bastnaesite, but where and which exactly are the others and in what quantity.

I would also like to see a detailed analysis of the cost of upgrading the new Project Phoenix SX system at Mountain Pass to process the heavy rare earth fraction remaining after the first separation of the light rare earths, lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, and neodymium, and the further separation of the samarium, gadolinium, and europium, medium rare earths fraction. Are any rare earths present beyond europium in "commercially recoverable" quantities, and if so, how are they, the heavy rare earths, to be separated from each other? Since Molycorp openly said less than a year ago that it had no plans to separate the "heavy rare earths" at Mountain Pass I ask Molycorp to please tell us what process they have now installed to do that? I assume its ion exchange, because I do not think there is any other way for them to have a limited use specialized system up and running in less than a year. Actually now that I think about it there is such a system and Molycorp is aware of it, SPE, solid phase extraction, but they rejected it several years ago.

I have a theory. I suspect that Molycorp is intending to send the heavy or even the medium, and heavy, fractions from their SX plant to China for the recovery of the contained rare earths by and at Molycorp China? That would make sense both as a cost saving and efficiency move, but it would require import and export permits from the Chinese government, which are probably harder to get than hen's teeth. But if there are concentrates to be processed from Mountain Pass and they are processed in China then returned to the USA then I would call them domestic materials.

Here's an idea: Perhaps the tiny amount of dysprosium concerned could be obtained in a heavy rare earth concentrate at Mountain Pass then separated and purified in China then made into metals and alloys either in Japan or the USA and then delivered to Hitachi in China Grove, North Carolina. Publicists and government bureaucrats could I think legally call this
domestic" American material, but it would be hard to justify if someone else did all of the steps in the total supply chain within the United States and offered it at a lower price. I am betting that will happen.

By the way I just thought of another question for Molycorp: How long will it take to accumulate enough "heavy rare earth" concentrate to make a cost effective separation run? The SX and IEX processes don't lend themselves to any size runs. They have minimum thresholds. So, I ask, politely, what are those limits for Molycorp and when will there be enough concentrate to make a minimum run."