Jakarta –
Indonesia has treasures that are much hunted in the world. It’s a rare earth metal. This resource has enormous economic value and the world is competing to find it.
So the treasure being hunted, how many potential rare earth reserves in Indonesia?
Director General of Mineral and Coal at the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, Ridwan Djamaluddin, explained that Indonesia has so far been late in exploring rare earth metals. Therefore, at this time there is not much definite information that can be obtained about the existing potential.
He said that so far there are around 8 mapped locations that contain rare earths in Indonesia. It is still only in the early exploration stage.
“In the exploration stage, we are limited, from the existing potential, it is found in 9 locations, and only 8 locations have been mapped,” said Ridwan in a working meeting with Commission VII DPR, Monday (11/4/2022).
“From these 8 locations, initial exploration has only been carried out, in general, we have very limited information,” he said.
He said the most rare earth metals were in the Province of the Bangka Belitung Islands, specifically in tin mining. There are tens or even hundreds of thousands of tons of LTJ potential in the province.
“Most of them are in the province of the Bangka Belitung Islands, especially in South Bangka,” said Ridwan.
In the data displayed by Ridwan, in Bangka Belitung there is a potential of rare earth metals of 186,663 tons of rare earth metals in the form of monasite and 20,734 rare earth metals in the form of senotime.
There are also rare earth metals in the form of laterite in Central Sulawesi at 443 tons and West Kalimantan at 219 tons. There is also a potential in North Sumatra of 19,917 tons.
Rare earth metal itself is a magnetic and conductive by-product that is used as the main component in providing power to most electronic devices or gadgets, namely mobile phones, tablets, speakers, and so on.
The use of rare earth metals has also begun to be found in the health sector to the defense industry.
Watch Videos “Rocks Containing Pyrite Minerals, Hunted by Lebong Miners Mark North Bengkulu“
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(hal/zlf)
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