re: Total Amount of People That Work in Oil and Gas

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This whole climate change shite was made up by the Democrats

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Money and Power for China.

China's monopoly over these rare minerals



According to geologists, rare earths are not rare, but they are precious. The answer to what appears to be a riddle lies in accessibility. Comprising 17 elements that are used extensively in both consumer electronics and national defense equipment, rare earth elements (REEs) were first discovered and put into use in the United States. However, production gradually shifted to China, where lower labor costs, less concern for environmental impacts, and generous state subsidies enabled the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to account for 97 percent of global production. In 1997, Magniquench, then-America’s leading rare earths company, was sold to an investment consortium headed by Archibald Cox, Jr., son of the same-named Watergate prosecutor, with two Chinese state-owned metals firms, San Huan New Materials and China National Nonferrous Metals Import and Export Company. The chairman of San Huan, son-in-law of paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, became chairman of the company. Magniquench was shut down in the United States, moved to China, and reopened in 2003, where it fit in well with Deng’s Super 863 Program to acquire cutting-edge technologies for military applications, including “exotic materials.” This left Molycorp as the last remaining major rare earths producer in the United States until its collapse in 2015.



For the United States, REEs arose again in the context of the U.S.-China trade war. In May 2019, PRC General Secretary Xi Jinping paid a well-publicized and highly symbolic visit to a rare earths mine in Jiangxi that was interpreted as highlighting the leverage his government has over Washington. Lest the implication be missed, Renmin Ribao, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee, wrote, “We advise the U.S. side not to underestimate the Chinese side’s ability to safeguard its development rights and interests. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.” Observers noted that the expression “don’t say we didn’t warn you” is typically used by official media only for very serious situations such as in 1978 prior to the PRC’s invasion of Vietnam and in a 2017 border dispute with India. To add to American concerns, as more advanced weapons are developed, more REEs are needed. To cite just two examples, every F-35 fighter jet requires 920 pounds of rare earth, and each Virginia-class submarine needs ten times that amount.

fpolicyresearch.org