Moscow and Washington have begun discussions on projects involving Russian rare earth metals, Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, told Izvestia. According to him, American companies have already shown interest in possible agreements. It is expected that a new meeting of Russian and US representatives in Riyadh may take place in mid-April. It is known that the parties are discussing not only political issues but also economic cooperation as part of the renewed communication. Izvestia reports on the prospects of Russian-American dialogue on mineral resources.

How Russia and the US are cooperating on rare earth metals
Russia and the US have begun discussions on rare earth metals (REM) projects, Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund and Special Representative of the President of the Russian Federation for Investment and Economic Cooperation with Foreign Countries, told Izvestia.

“Rare earth metals are an important area for cooperation, and, of course, we have begun discussions on various rare earth metals and projects in Russia,” he told Izvestia.

According to Dmitriev, some companies have already expressed interest in the projects.

In February, US President Donald Trump said he supported the idea of ​​concluding an agreement with Moscow on access to rare earth metals. Washington, he said, is interested in both the “huge reserves” of such metals and other “very valuable resources” of Russia.

On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia is ready to offer US government agencies and companies cooperation in rare earth metal mining projects.

We certainly have an order of magnitude — I want to emphasize this — an order of magnitude more resources of this kind than Ukraine. Russia is one of the undisputed leaders in reserves of these rare and rare earth metals. We have them in the North — in Murmansk, in the Caucasus — in Kabardino-Balkaria, in the Far East, in the Irkutsk region, and in Yakutia, in Tyva, — said the head of state.

The total reserves of all rare metals in the Russian Federation, according to the Ministry of Natural Resources, amount to 658 million tons, of which rare earth metals account for 28.5 million tons. However, the share of our country’s production on the world market does not exceed 1%, and the processing of such metals is practically non-existent.

This year, the national project “New Materials and Chemistry” was launched, Vladimir Putin reported at the February specialized meeting. The national project is to establish a full cycle of the industry of rare and rare earth metals, ensure their extraction and processing up to the production of finished high-tech goods with high added value. The volume of production of such products as a result of the national project should increase many times over, the Russian president said.

The prospects for cooperation between Russia and the United States in the field of rare earth metals mining and processing may be quite broad. A certain warming of political relations between the countries is already observed, and against this background, we should not forget that the States depend on the import of this group of elements, industrial expert Leonid Khazanov told Izvestia.

– The United States mines about 45 thousand tons of rare earth metals per year. About 1.5 thousand tons are produced in the form of oxides, the rest is processed by China, and then the Americans buy from it. In the next 10 years, demand for rare earth metals in the United States will increase to about 75 thousand tons. Obviously, they will not be able to provide these volumes through their own mining, – the expert noted.

 

Source: Известия