Director General Of Mineral And Coal Admits Indonesia's Rare Earth Metal Exploration Is Not Progressive

JAKARTA - Director General of Mineral and Coal at the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, Ridwan Djamaluddin, revealed that despite having a lot of rare earth element (RRE) potential, Rare earth metal (LTJ) exploration activities in Indonesia are still not progressing. He explained that the exploration stages that have been carried out are still limited so that from the existing potential, the Director-General of Minerba can only indicate LTJ in 7 locations.

"Meanwhile, there are only 9 locations and while those that have been mapped as resources are only 8 locations," he said in a Hearing Meeting with Commission VII of the Indonesian House of Representatives (DPR RI), Monday, April 11.

However, the 8 locations that have been mapped are still in the early exploration stage, so the location of LTJ is still very limited.

He detailed, LTJ spread in several areas in Indonesia. Among them is the Province of North Sumatra as much as 19.917 tons. Then in the Province of Bangka Belitung, with the amount of LTJ in the form of monazite as much as 186.663 tons, then senotim as much as 20.734 tons. Meanwhile, in West Kalimantan, there are 219 tons of LTJ Laterite and 443 tons of LTJ Laterite in Central Sulawesi.

"The rest are scattered in North Sumatra, West Kalimantan is also quite a lot of locations although the volume is still far from Bangka Belitung and some are in Central Sulawesi," he added.

He also explained that since 2021 the Director-General of Mineral and Coal has carried out initial exploration of technical activities such as mapping, georadar and geomagnetics with the results of resource estimates in the Kepodang Block, South Bangka in a potential area of 255 hectares with a total volume of more than 35 thousand tons.

Meanwhile, for this year, his party has increased exploration activities from the initial stage to the detailed stage in Bangka Belitung and will add more exploration activities in the Mamuju and Konawe areas in 2024.

"Private companies have also been involved, such as PT Timah, PT Mitra Stania Prima, PT Stanindo Inti Perkasa and CV Ayi Jaya. Currently they have also carried out quite advanced exploration," he continued.

Internally, the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources has also carried out integrated activities between the Director-General of Mineral and Coal and the Geology Agency and the Research and Development Center of TekMira so that he hopes that exploration activities can become more integrated.

"The budget is also quite limited for exploration so that the Geological Agency's activities for exploration are mostly supported by the Minerba budget," he concluded.