subject: Rare Earths, China And The Price Of Oil. [print this page] Rare Earths, China and the The Price of Oil
BEIJING China's biggest producer of rare earths is suspending production for one month in hopes of boosting slumping prices of the exotic minerals used in mobile phones and other high-tech products.
This week's move by Inner Mongolia Baotou Steel Rare-Earth (Group) Hi-Tech might fuel tensions with the United States and Europe. They have questioned Beijing's decision announced earlier to limit exports while it tries to develop its own manufacturers of magnets and other products made of rare earths.
In a statement through the Shanghai Stock Exchange, Baotou Steel said it wants to "balance supply and demand" after prices for rare earths fell amid uncertainty about the U.S. and European economic outlooks.
Rare earths are a group of 17 minerals used in manufacturing flat-screen TVs, mobile phones, batteries for electric cars, wind turbines and weaponry.
It's also good to know that "China has about 30 percent of global rare earth deposits but accounts for 97 percent of production." Why did other countries, having about 70 percent of global rare earths deposits, stopped mining them? The short answer to this is that "there's no such thing as pollution in China" (a non-physics statement, to be more precise). The long answer is that China lowered production costs, hence market prices, to such a level that it was more profitable to import rare earths from there than to mine for them at home. But things, it seems, start to gradually change.
Crude oil is Petroleum. This word comes from the latin word petra which means rock and oleum which means oil. In some ways we could then call it rock oil. (based on the geology and mineralogy)
In simple terms, Crude Oil is a naturally occurring, flammable liquid consisting of a complex mixture of hydrocarbons of various molecular weights and other liquid organic compounds that are found in geologic formations beneath the Earth's surface.