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Bezos, Bloomberg and Gates look to Greenland’s rare earths for a greener future

What’s going on in Greenland? It’s quickly becoming the hot spot in the search for rare earths to power the green energy transition. It’s a somewhat ironic twist of fate that climate change is contributing to the melting of ice cover in Greenland at an unprecedented rate, creating the opportunity for investors and mining companies by making exploration and mining in Greenland easier and more accessible. It also appears there is no shortage of capital available to pursue this chase for rare earths.

The month of August saw a couple of interesting news items come to light with respect to Greenland. First, the world learned that Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg and Bill Gates are betting that there are enough critical minerals to power hundreds of millions of electric vehicles below the surface of Greenland’s Disko Island and Nuussuaq Peninsula. This is part of a very rich, very powerful investor group in privately held mining company called KoBold Metals. In February the company raised US$192.5 million in a Series B funding round that also included Canada Pension Plan (CPP) Investment Board, Bond Capital, BHP Ventures, Standard Investments, Sam Altman’s Apollo Projects, Mitsubishi, and Sarah Kunst’s Cleo Capital. Some of this capital goes towards funding the company’s exploration of the joint venture 2,776 km² Disko-Nuussuaq Magmatic Massive Sulphide nickel-copper-platinum-cobalt project located on the southwest coast of Greenland with London listed Bluejay Mining PLC (AIM: JAY).

Then at the end of August Neo Performance Materials Inc. (TSX: NEO) announced it had executed a binding agreement whereby Neo will acquire from Hudson Resources Inc. (TSXV: HUD | OTC: HUDRF) an exploration license covering the Sarfartoq Carbonatite Complex in southwest Greenland.  The Sarfartoq Project hosts a mineral deposit that is enriched in neodymium and praseodymium, two essential elements for rare earth permanent magnets used in electric vehicles, wind turbines, and high-efficiency electric motors and pumps that help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It makes a lot of sense for Neo to develop the Sarfartoq Project to further diversify its global sourcing of rare earth ore and to expand the rare earths supply chains that feed Neo’s rare earth separation facility in Estonia. Neo is also pursuing plans to break ground on a greenfield rare earth permanent magnet manufacturing plant in Estonia that is intended to provide European manufacturers with their permanent magnet needs.

But what is the significance of all this activity in Greenland? This giant North Atlantic landmass, with only 57,000 residents, was famously sought after by none other than President Trump, who floated the idea of buying Greenland multiple times back in 2019 from Denmark, its former colonial power. Bluejay Mining believes that both previous studies and work conducted by the company have already highlighted the Disko Project area potential to host mineralization similar to the world’s largest nickel/copper sulphide mine Norilsk-Talnakh in Siberia. In fact, Kurt House, CEO of KoBold Metals is quoted as saying: “We are looking for a deposit that will be the first- or second-largest most significant nickel and cobalt deposit in the world.” Perhaps this is what is making Greenland so popular.

Another factor that has brought Greenland to the forefront in the hunt for critical minerals is the rapidly changing northern climate, which is making ice-free periods in the sea longer, allowing teams to ship in heavy equipment and ship out metals to the global market more easily. Additionally, retreating ice is exposing land that has been buried under the ice for centuries or even millennia, but could now become a potential site for mineral exploration. This is playing out on a much smaller scale in British Columbia’s “golden triangle”, where retreating glaciers have exposed continuations of some of the gold plays in the region.

If anything good can come from climate change, perhaps Greenland’s environmental misfortune can potentially help the world turn the corner in its quest to advance the green revolution as quickly as possible. Whatever happens, some big names and a lot of money is being thrown at projects in Greenland right now, bringing this barren and desolate part of the world back into the news and to the attention of investors.




China owns the Green revolution with falling prices of critical technology minerals

Why haven’t the world’s senior miners (aka, the actual producers of non-fuel minerals as well as of oil, gas, and coal) alerted the global manufacturing industry to the limitations on the annual production of the critical mineral resources needed for any Green transformation of the world’s energy economy away from fossil fuels? The simple answer is that they’re making too much money with the nonsensical distortions of the fossil fueled energy economy led by natural resource production illiterates.

Buying back their stock to raise the share prices, so that the insiders (aka management and its bankers) seems to be the most common use of earnings among the seniors.

The seniors are, of course, the world’s suppliers of energy fuels and of structural metals, such as iron and aluminum, and infrastructure metals, such as copper. Those three metals constitute 95% of all the metals produced annually, and iron constitutes 95% of that total.

60% of all metals are produced or processed and utilized in manufacturing in just one nation – China. 90% of all of the critical technology metals necessary for a Green transformation are produced, processed and utilized in manufacturing in China!

It is actual Chinese demand for ALL metals that sets the production goals and prices charged by the seniors.

China now owns or has contracted to buy the critical technology minerals – for which it already has the capability and capacity to process and fabricate end-user products enabled by these same technology metals – sufficient to meet its domestic (world dominating) demands for years to come.

The critical metals China doesn’t already control are insufficient to support a green energy transition outside of China.

China has the pick of the litter of deposits and mines, globally. It has achieved this enviable position by not being concerned about price, but rather targeting national self-sufficiency in critical materials.

China will now allow “free market” capitalism to eliminate competition for the remaining critical mineral assets it doesn’t control. They are simply too expensive for private development even among the senior miners, whose goal is profit, not security of supply regardless of cost.

China’s industrial policy supported by state capitalism has achieved their goal of energy independence.

Oil from the Mid-East and (sanctioned) Russia, plus domestic coal and Kazakh uranium, ensure Chinese energy independence from imbecilic Western policies.

China’s attitude towards immigration also ensures that the great energy/food migration that is already occurring will not disrupt China’s economy internally.

Profit equals selling price minus cost of goods sold.

China offered enormous one-time profits to senior and junior miners producing or developing critical minerals.

It was a trick.

It worked.

The lesson is that an industrial policy supported by state capitalism to secure the supplies of critical minerals for national self-sufficiency in the world’s largest domestic economy has worked. Crony capitalism in the world’s second largest domestic economy has been an abject rudderless failure in that regard.

Low metal prices mean no profit means no domestic American security of supply.

Even subsidies (aka, state capitalism) cannot help in any short term, because the legacy skills to re-industrialize America have been de-emphasized to the point that American education does not support them at all.

Got it?

The new normal, “engineered and made in China.”