ISLAMABAD: Illegall minining and smuggling of Bastanasite – a precious gemstone of high quality and a great source of rare eath elements (REEs) found in the Zagi mountain of Khyber District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province – is depriving Pakistan of a fortune, reports WealthPK.
In a discussion with WealthPK about the importance of Bastnasite and official negligence about its mining, Principal Geologist in the Global Mining Company and former general manager geology at the Pakistan Mineral Development Corporation (PMDC) Muhammad Yaqub Shah said Bastnasite was a unique mineral and a great source of REEs.
He said it was essential to properly explore and mine this rare mineral for the benefit of the country rather than damaging the national treasures through illegal mining by indiscriminate blasting.
Yaqub Shah said in crystalline form, Bastnasite was a precious gemstone of high quality. It is reported to occur only in the vicinity of Zagi mountains in Khyber district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where its potential mineralization could be traced in more than 100 square kilometer area within its host alkaline igneous rocks.
“Unfortunately, this precious mineral has not been explored properly for scientific mining but instead it is illegally being mined by the locals. The product is either sold in the local market as a gemstone or smuggled out to the international market. In whatever quantity this principal source of REEs is found, every grain of it must only be used for Pakistan, ” he added.
In a discussion with WealthPK about the discovery of Bastnasite in Pakistan, senior professor of geology at the Bahria University, Islamabad and former deputy director at the Geological Survey of Pakistan (GSP) Dr. Tehseenullah Khan said, “In 2003, I was officially assigned to research and record all details about the gem resources of Pakistan. This research was published in 2010 in the form of a book titled ‘Gems and Gemmology in Pakistan’, available in the Geo-Science Research lab in Chak Shahzad, Islamabad.”
“During this project, I discovered Bastnasite in Pakistan for the first time in Zagi mountain. I analyzed the Bastnasite specimen and found the presence of two REEs of strategic value i.e. Cerium (Ce), and Lanthanum (La) in it,” he said.
Sharing his views about Bastnasite exploration in Pakistan with WealthPK, gemmologist and miner Zakir Ullah alias Jhulay Lal said, “In 1994, I was working with an American geologist Herbert P. Obodda. Herb used to buy gemstones from me in Pakistan and I gave him the crystals of a strange mineral. By that time there was not any advanced lab in the country to test proper mineralogy. Herb took the samples to America where they were tested and were proved the specimen of Bastnasite (it was an innocent trade that we were unaware of the real value). After that, he bought a good quantity of its large crystals. By that time its importance and rarity were almost unknown. No one except him was the buyer.”
“During the same period, some more foreigners started to buy them blindly. They bought huge quantities and all were wonderfully the perfect crystals attached to the mother rocks. In 1999, I myself got 200 crystals along with Bastnasite. They were superbly clear and shimmering that they could be called the gems of the first water. After selling that lot, I have never seen such rarities again. They are not even available in the market around the globe except in the collectors’ vaults,” he said.
Mostly Bastnasite ores contain REEs, such as Lanthanum (La), Cerium (Ce), Praseodymium (Pr), and Neodymium (Nd), which are used in many manufacturing industries including LEDs, energy-saving lamps, fluorescent tubes, optical lenses, radiation absorbent glass; carbon electrode cores in arc lamps, incandescent mantels of gas lighting, permanent magnets, glass coloring, didymium glass, enamels, and glazes.
The global Lanthanum (La) market is projected to be worth US$ 773.4 million by the year 2028 as against US$ 551.5 million in 2022. Cerium (Ce) rate in the international market is expected to reach USD1902.20 million by 2027 from USD668.1 million in 2021. The price of Praseodymium (Pr) is expected to reach around 59,500 U.S. dollars per metric ton by the year 2030. The Neodymium (Nd) market will be valued globally at US$4.16 billion by the year 2030 as against US$ 2,17 billion in 2022.
Pakistan must focus on extracting the proper worth of Bastnasite, as it is a unique storage of different REEs. A strategic plan must be framed to properly benefit from all these natural gifts for the prosperity of the country and nation.
