Rare Earths in the Greater Central Asia (including Mongolia and Afghanistan): Only by cooperating with China can value be created
Western rare earth supply chains have had a technical and talent gap for more than 20 years, not to mention the relevant environmental regulations that restrict them. It would take at least 5-10 years or even longer to build an independent supply chain. Therefore, time is not the best ally of the European and American countries.
Rare earths are not really rare. There are many places around the world, but their characteristics are that they are distributed very scattered because they are attached and coexist with many other minerals. A large amount of material needs to be extracted to obtain a small amount of rare earths, so the production cost of rare earths is very high, especially the environmental cost. Producing 1 ton of rare earths creates 2,000 tons of waste, including three types of waste: exhaust gas, wastewater, and slag.
The former Prime Minister of Mongolia once discussed with the UK to use the UK's air route to transport rare earths, but in fact, it has no commercial value: you cannot fly 2,000 tons of rare earth raw materials just to extract 1 ton of rare earths.
When talking about rare earth reserves, we need to look at the rare earth oxides (REO) in the rare earth mines. Whether it is Mongolia or Kazakhstan, the rich reserves have not been verified by authoritative departments.
Mongolia is rich in mineral resources, having identified more than 80 types of minerals, including copper, molybdenum, gold, silver, uranium, lead, iron, and coal, with over 3,000 mining sites. Petroleum is mainly distributed in the southern Gobi Province and the eastern Gobi Province's large lake valley area adjacent to China. The Erdenet copper-molybdenum mine has been listed as one of the top ten copper-molybdenum mines in the world, with the largest reserves in Asia (but due to over-mining, desertification has occurred).
According to Mongolian State News Agency Mongolnews on December 1, 2023, in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia has a total reserve of rare earth oxides of 3.1 million tons. Among the six discovered ore deposits, four are large deposits, and two are small deposits.
The Wikipedia Mongolian page mentions that Hottogor in the Khan Khongor County of the Southern Gobi Province has the world's largest unexploited rare earth mine, but this has never been confirmed by official media, such as Mongolnews; foreign authoritative statistical institutions, such as Statista, also do not list Mongolia among the countries with rich rare earth resources. In fact, rare earth reserves do not equate to the total amount of rare earth oxides.
It should be noted that the Southern Gobi Province is the largest province in Mongolia, with a lot of deserts and vast, sparsely populated areas. This province is rich in copper, coal, gold, and lead.
The Chogt Tsetsen County in the Southern Gobi Province has the Tavan Tolgoi Coal Mine (TT), and the Khangai Bogd County has the Oyu Tolgoi Copper-Gold Mine (OT), both of which are world-class large mines.
Original: toutiao.com/article/1856419964248064/
Statement: This article represents the personal views of the author.