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Besides the unforgiving climate that encases much of Greenland under layers of ice and freezes the northern fjords for much of the year, the rare earths found there tend to be encased in a complex type of rock called eudialyte, and no one has ever developed a profitable process to extract rare earths from that type of rock. Elsewhere, these elements are normally found in different rock formation called carbonatites, and there are proven methods to work with that.
“If we’re in a race for for critical minerals – then we should be focusing on the resources that are most easily able to get to market,” said David Abraham, a rare earths expert who has followed the industry for decades and wrote the book “The Elements of Power.”