The Minister of Energy announces that Romania has signed an agreement with a US company with licenses for deposits in Greenland: “We will have a refinery of rare minerals”
Bogdan Ivan, Photo: Government of Romania
The Minister of Energy, Bogdan Ivan, announced on Monday evening, on Antena 3 CNN, that Romania signed a preliminary document with a mining company from the United States, which holds mining licenses for rare deposits in Greenland, for the construction of a refinery in our country.
“By the end of March, mid-April, we will crystalize very clearly what are the terms, what are the materials that we will process in Romania, what are the conditions, what are the financings, and in mid-April we will arrive with a Memorandum in the Government of Romania, through which we will accept all these things between Romania and the USA and thus we will make the first integrated project between extraction, refining and subsequent consumption, because that company already has contracts with very large companies in the aerospace industry in the USA, to deliver further these equipment”, said the Minister of Energy, quoted by News.ro.
“At the moment when we in Romania already have the rare materials refinery, automatically those companies that today make the aerospace industry 7,000 km away will think “well, it's not easier for me to put another factory in Brasov or Sibiu to process further” (…) and in this form we start to be world players, because we have all the resources to be there”, said Bogdan Ivan.
The minister claimed that the lack of refining capacities makes Romania lose added value.
“Refining the critical materials that exist on Romania's territory is the most complex thing and for this reason Romania loses a lot”, he said, explaining that the copper ore extracted at a purity of 3-5% is transported abroad for processing and returns to the country at a purity of 98%.
“If today we mine copper ore in Romania at a purity of 3-5%, we take it to the Port of Constanța, put it on ships, take it to Turkey, refine it there and bring it back, 98% purity (…) it is obvious how much we are losing. And with only 300 million to begin with, you can build the first copper refinery in our country, which will serve Romania as well as the neighboring states”, he added declared the Minister of Energy.
The Minister of Energy previously stated that Romania has 16 of the 32 elements considered critical at the European level, which are found only in our country and “the maximum still in an EU member country”, which “positions us in the first place in terms of underground resources, rare earths and rare materials”, according to him.
