BRICS geological services to compile lists of critical minerals

MOSCOW. July 22 (Interfax) - The geological services of BRICS countries agreed at their first official meeting to compile lists of minerals that are critically important for their economies.

"China and Russia have their own approved lists of critical minerals that will be sought after by our industry in the short and medium term. Accordingly, we also pointed out to our colleagues [in the BRICS group of countries] the need to compile lists of strategic and critical types of mineral resources that will be in demand in their countries' economies in the medium term," the head of the Federal Mineral Resources Agency (Rosnedra), Yevgeny Petrov told reporters.

These lists will vary by country, foremost due to geological conditions, he said. The lists will help determine the main avenues of cooperation between the geological services of BRICS countries in terms of sharing experience and developing technologies.

"We will cooperate more in terms of prospecting and exploring mineral resource deposits, because deposits of critical minerals are, as a rule, very complex geologically and not that easy to find. And it is exactly here that we will look at our colleagues' experience, and also use their deposits as models for fine-tuning our own prospecting methods. [...] And the second part is, of course, specifically personnel, competencies, technologies for mining and processing," Petrov said.

However, every adopted technology will still need to be adapted. "Again, there are no two identical deposits in the world. You can't take a technology and scale it to another deposit. In this sense, BRICS is a big communication platform for sharing experience and refining methods," Petrov said.