John Kaiser on REE
posted on
Sep 22, 2009 01:09PM
Matamec Explorations Inc. is a junior mining exploration company whose main focus is in developing the Kipawa heavy rare earths deposit.
A bit of a read but wou will like what he has to say about REE
It applies to us very well
http://www.stockhouse.com/Bullboards/MessageDetail.aspx?p=0&m=27472785&s=AVL&t=LIST&l=0&r=0
Here's a snippet:
D.P: Now you are mentioning this rare earth mania, a lot
of rare earth stocks have just flown in the last six months.
It kind of reminds me of uranium two or three years ago
when uranium went through the roof and then all of a sudden
just died. We saw six companies become 600 and
many of those 600 have since disappeared. Are you now
suggesting that rare earth could fly for some time?
J.K: I will say there are similarities and differences between
uranium and the rare earth elements. The similarity
is that uranium itself is less than 5% of the cost of running
a nuclear power plant. So it is quite insensitive to price.
You are going to need your nuclear fuels no matter what
the price is. The rare earth elements are like that too. So
they can see their prices go up substantially if suddenly
there is a shortage. But unlike uranium, there are not a lot
of rare earth deposits in the world. There are lots of rare
earth showings, little veins here and there, but the major
systems are few and far between, especially enriched with
rare earth elements.
There are lots of uranium deposits all over the world, so it
was predictable that when the uranium prices shot up because
of a shortage of supply, there were going to be hundreds
of companies all boasting pounds of uranium in the
ground. There is another important difference between
uranium and rare earth. With uranium – you can predict
future demand. The predictions are correct that there is
an imbalance and a lot more uranium deposits have to go
into production to meet the demand as these 40 to 70
power plants on the drawing board eventually come on
stream. Rare earths are different as their special properties
open up material science research opportunities. If
these raw materials are actually available, the work will go
into finding out what these things can do, developing
commercial applications and setting plans to commercialize
them. You could see the market for these rare earth
elements blossom in ways that are unimaginable.
I think the rare earth mania can go completely insane over
the next while because you cannot quantify the limit of
how big this could get, especially when you start controlling
the downstream applications – the alloys and all the
other special metals you can create by adding rare earths.
You can’t add uranium to very much except nuclear
bombs and that’s not a viable business, but with rare
earths you can. So I expect the mania to produce extraordinary
valuations for those companies which control
these deposits, not because you can do the math and get
a net present value calculation that’s worth $1 billion or $2
billion, but because the strategic value of long-term control
of these raw materials is going to lie in the imagination
of the visionaries behind the big, large corporations
that are controlling the economic future of the world.
D.P: That’s good preliminary, but now we get to the meat
of the matter and that’s getting some names to watch. So
with the gold sector, which would be some of your favorite
picks at this time and also in the rare earth metals? Of
interest, seeing as we’ve just spent some time in Ketchikan,
Alaska, what would be your thoughts at this time for
one junior explorer – Ucore Uranium?