From Hard Assets Investor:

Tom Vulcan, rare earth metals reporter for HardAssetsInvestor.com, recently had the chance to speak in Washington, D.C., with Mark Smith, CEO of Molycorp Minerals LLC. With its mine at Mountain Pass, Calif., Molycorp currently owns and runs the Western Hemisphere's only rare earth ore mining operation.

Tom Vulcan (Vulcan): Is Molycorp the only producer of the rare earth metals in the Western Hemisphere?

Mark Smith, CEO, Molycorp Minerals (Smith): Actually we don't produce metals as of today. We mine the ore out of the ground, crush and mill the ore to create a concentrate, and then we go through a very sophisticated processing step to produce the rare earth oxides. There is only one country in the world today that can take the oxides and convert them to metals, and that's China...

Read full interview...

More on mining:

Gold stocks will scream higher this year

World's top money manager goes waaaay long South African gold

Chinese mining stock boom: gold and copper miners lead surging market