Greenwood Village-based Molycorp Inc. said today it received federal authorization to begin exploratory drilling for rare earth minerals at Mountain Pass, Calif., 50 miles south of Las Vegas.
“This is an important milestone in our heavy rare earth strategy, and we expect to begin drilling immediately,” Mark A. Smith, Molycorp’s president and chief executive officer, said in a statement. “We anticipate results from the drilling program in the second quarter of 2012.”
Rare-earth minerals are used in hybrid and electric vehicle batteries and wind turbines; high-tech products including fiber optics, lasers and hard disk drives; and defense applications such as radar and guidance systems.
Molycorp said preliminary exploration at the Mountain Pass site has shown rare earth mineralization with an average ore grade of approximately four percent and a relatively high percentage of heavy rare earths, such as terbium, dysprosium, europium and samarium, as well as relatively high percentages of yttrium, neodymium, and praseodymium.
