Race for Rare Earths

Has Alaska has been surveyed from the air with modern geophysics?

If so, analysis of these should provide targets for further exploration, staking etc/

Maybe it depends on how you feel about being beholden to China. They quietly priced everyone out of the market and now control the bulk of an essential commodity. Rare earths are now in just about everything that produces light. Someone was thinking ahead and it clearly wasn't us.

If Alaska wants to raise revenue by selling licences to private companies to prospect, it needs to know what is there to maximise income. If the survey is funded by the government, all fees earned should revert to government until the costs plus say 200% profit (what would the banks charge at present) are repaid.

If other States want to enter into a similar arrangement, and the government can find the cash, that's OK too.

A smart government would then get the private sector at their own risk, to finance the survey for cost plus 100%.

This is just a Governor taking a hot topic and using it as an excuse to extract federal money. As already stated China controls well over 95% of the current worlds supply. They had previously driven the price very low, so much so that many operations elsewhere are the world went idle. Since China's market manipulating older mines and well as newer REE mines have gotten back in the game (stock symbol REE, AVL, MCP, etc).

Opening a mine isn't an overnight operation. There are deposits being mined in one stage or another in the lower 48, Canada and Europe. China will never completely get control of this market for any lasting period of time. But if you're a good chess player you know how with a move or two to force your opponent off track while making them use up their pieces and time defending you. This is exactly what China has done to the rest of the world.

So to answer the original question I think its a waste of funds. Known deposits are already in the works. Funding a search for possible deposits is several years late to the party. That doesn't stop politicians from using current events to shift more money into their States though.