April 2011 Updates To The TMR Advanced Rare-Earth Projects Index

by Gareth Hatch on April 16, 2011 · 12 comments

Since our March 2011 update, there have been some significant updates to the data for three projects on the TMR Advanced Rare-Earth Projects Index:

Greenland Minerals and Energy Ltd. (ASX:GGG, PK:GDLNF) published an updated mineral-resource estimate for its Kvanefjeld project in Greenland;
Quest Rare Minerals Ltd. (TSX.V:QRM, PK:QSURD) published an updated mineral-resource estimate for its Strange Lake project in Quebec, Canada
Stans Energy Corp. (TSX.V:RUU, OTCQX:HREEF) published an updated mineral-resource estimate for its Kutessay II project in Kyrgyzstan, based on JORC guidelines. Stans Energy is now listed on the OTCQX exchange.

I have updated the pricing used in the Index data, to reflect the average monthly prices for March 2011 and the moving three-year average price for separated rare-earth oxides.

You can access the details via the Index page.

About Gareth Hatch

For more than 20 years, Gareth Hatch has helped people and organizations to better understand the challenges of the critical-materials supply chain. He is Managing Director of Strategic Materials Advisors and was a co-founder of Technology Metals Research, consulting firms operating in the critical-materials sector. Gareth is co-founder and CEO of Innovations Metals Corp. (IMC), developers of the proprietary RapidSX™ separation and purification process for critical metals. IMC is owned by Ucore Rare Metals Inc. (TSX.V:UCU) for whom he serves as CTO and Director. The views and opinions expressed by Gareth on this archived Web site are his alone. Such views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of any other person or entity.

1 Ruediger Haberland April 16, 2011 at 3:46 PM: Please, what are the units of the horizontal axis?
RH
2 wwwater April 16, 2011 at 5:28 PM: Gareth, on you analysis of the individual deposits it would be helpful as a comparative if you had the initu dollar value per tonne of ore of each of the oxides. I will use Mountain Pass as an example.
Right below “In-situ REO:TREO (wt%)”
you could have another category “Insitu TREO Value Per Tonne of Ore
under “La” $2,190.41, “Ce” $3,111.25 and so on for the entire lanthanide series with a total at the end $7,232.64
3 Richard Karn April 16, 2011 at 6:55 PM: NAV is spinning off its Cummins Range REE project (JORC compliant) in a new company, Kimberley Rare Earths (KRE:ASX), that is set to debut in May (check the company website for details).
Because of the Wet, I was unable to get in to the project (mostly drill collars) but will later this year when we get to the Kimberley to look at specialty metal projects–and there are many.
4 Gareth Hatch April 16, 2011 at 7:20 PM: @Ruediger: apologies for missing the label off the x-axis – I’ve now added it – it is “Rare-earth oxide value per unit mass of mineral resource (US$/t)”.
@wwwater: thanks for the feedback. I do track that info, along with a number of other metrics and charts relating to the projects, but at this time share such details with private clients only.
@Richard Karn: thanks for note – I’ve been keeping an eye on the proposed spin-off of Kimberley Rare Earths; once it’s been completed we will of course update the Index to reflect the new owner of the deposit.
5 prescient11 April 16, 2011 at 9:14 PM: wwwater, there is actually a brokerage report, publicly available, that looks at ore value and percentage in relation to market price, this is by Euro Pacific, and although Quest specific, it does compare a lot of the projects that look like the real deal.
It is not the very specific, detailed information that Gareth references, but it’s a good visual.
6 kevin franklin April 17, 2011 at 7:41 AM: please let me know what would be a good project to put money into what would you do thank you kevin franklin
7 kev April 17, 2011 at 7:59 AM: Kutessay II looks the most promising !
8 Fred April 19, 2011 at 9:57 PM: Gareth, I don’t know if you are aware but last week a small Quebec company published a report suggesting they could extract rare earth oxides from a clay deposit they are developing to 99.99% purity. The quantities aren’t huge but the technology seems to be quite impressive. You can check them out here:
http://www.explorationorbite.com/
I’d be curious as to your thoughts regarding the potential of this technology.
9 Gareth Hatch April 19, 2011 at 10:04 PM: @kevin franklin: sorry – I don’t give investment advice :-) I will say that I believe that a number of the projects in the TMR Advanced Rare-Earth Projects Index are definitely promising, and you could perhaps use that as a starting point to narrow down your choices.
@Fred: I did see the news on Exploration Orbite. Including scandium, their initial data indicates a material grade of 0.05% of rare earths maximum. This is very low … the La and Nd apparently present, for example, is at maybe twice the average crustal abundance for these elements – i.e. nothing particularly noteworthy. Any process used to recover these elements, even as byproducts, would have to be extremely low cost for it to be worthwhile.
10 Fred April 20, 2011 at 8:49 AM: Yes, I agree with you about the low grade. However, it is my understanding that the extraction process is quite cheap and that they are testing it on other deposits where the rare earth content is higher… definitely something to keep an eye on. It is particularly relevant when you consider that most rare earth projects don’t have a cheap or easy way to recover oxides in high purity.
11 Gareth Hatch April 20, 2011 at 9:46 AM: @Fred: there’s low grade, and then there’s LOW grade… there are advanced projects out there with grades over 300 times richer in rare earths than this one. Understand that the value of the potential primary product in this case, aluminous clay, does not give very much wiggle room in terms of the cost of extraction of any rare earths present.
12 Jesse Carlton April 25, 2011 at 5:58 PM: Hi Gareth,
What happens to your weighted prices per ton if you bring La and Ce prices down to say, 10$/kg? Everything I read out there says that La and Ce prices are well inflated and are not sustainable. I think it’d be worth while to show what might happen when Lynas and Molycorp start producing.
As always, thanks for the solid information.