The Geological Agency of the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources will propose a mining business permit area concession (WIUP) for rare earth minerals in Mamuju, West Sulawesi and work with a number of companies to manage this mining area.
The new WIUP aims to expedite the initial exploration process and detailed exploration of the potential of rare earth metals in the area.
Submission of this proposal originated from the discovery of significant rare earth metal reserves by the Geological Agency from exploration activities that had taken place in 2022.
The exploration activity was carried out in two stages. The first stage will include mapping, georadar, geomagnets, test wells, and drilling. The second stage will include detailed exploration through more dense drilling and extraction tests including characterization, concentration and extraction.
This exploration resulted in the highest total rare earth metal content in Mamuju of 4.571 parts per million (ppm), which can be found in monazite and senotime phosphate minerals.
Hariyanto, Head of the Center for Mineral, Coal and Geothermal Resources, said that so far there is no WIUP for the development of rare earth metals.
“We will try to propose that the potential that is already significant is in Mamuju, a rare earth metal in the Sulawesi area,” he said, on August 7, 2023.
In addition, the Geological Agency is also exploring rare earth metals in the Lapindo Mud brine water in Sidoarjo, East Java. This exploration found a lithium potential of 86-92 ppm, a strontium potential of 394-451 ppm, and a maximum of 111 ppm of rare earth metals.
In this exploration, the Geological Agency collaborated with the Research and Development Center for Mineral and Coal Technology (TekMIRA).
“What we found and has the potential to seek development is in Sulawesi, namely in the Mamuju area,” said Hariyanto.
Use of rare earth minerals in various industries
The utilization of rare earth metals in general will be managed by two ministries later, first the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources which will regulate the upstream sector and secondly, the Ministry of Industry which will manage the downstream sector.
On the other hand, the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources has the task of extracting tin into monazite and then into metal.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Industry will turn the metal into goods that have high selling value, such as magnets or raw materials for lining military and aviation vehicles.
Meanwhile, monazite can also be used as a raw material for wind turbines that produce green energy.
The majority of rare earth metal reserves in Indonesia are currently stored on Bangka Belitung Island with an amount of 186,663 tons and 20,734 tons respectively. It can also be found in North Sumatra with 19,917 tons, West Kalimantan with 219 tons, and Central Sulawesi with 443 tons.
Compared to neighboring countries such as Vietnam, which has reserves of 22 million tons, China has 44 million tons, Brazil has 21 million tons, India has 6.9 million tons and the United States has 1.5 million tons.
Ministry cooperates with foreign companies
To accelerate this rare earth metal project, the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources will cooperate with a number of foreign companies to provide rare earth metal processing technology.
On the other hand, the government through PT Timah has collaborated with a technology company from Canada to develop monazite rare earth metal processing technology with a capacity of up to 1,000 tons per year.
Meanwhile, PT Timah has collaborated with the National Nuclear Energy Agency (BATAN) since 2010, by conducting a number of studies to process monazite into monazite carbonate concentrate, monazite hydroxide, and monazite oxide.
So far, through the cracking procedure, PT Timah and BATAN have produced as much as 300 tons of monazite hydroxide until March 2022. However, the monazite hydroxide mineral cannot be utilized due to regulatory constraints and market availability.
