Project Phoenix

Project Phoenix is Molycorp’s plan to reopen the Mountain Pass Rare Earth Mine after the 2010 Japan rare-earth shock. In Battlefield rare earths: How the U.S. lost to China, Mark Smith first presents the plan as a smaller restart of mining and processing, then describes a second phase meant to double production capacity.

The project matters because the episode treats it as a failed comeback template. Smith says he should have focused on phase one and delayed the expansion. Once Molycorp announced the larger output target, rare-earth prices later crashed, and the company could not sustain the strategy.

The source does not prove that China deliberately crashed prices to undermine Project Phoenix, but it preserves Smith’s allegation and uses the episode to explain Dominant Producer Price Discipline: a dominant supplier can make new non-Chinese capacity harder to finance if it can change market prices at the wrong moment.

Connections

• Molycorp, Mountain Pass Rare Earth Mine, and Mark Smith - project owner, site, and executive.
• Japan and Rare Earth Export Leverage - shock that made the reopening attractive.
• Dominant Producer Price Discipline - risk exposed by the price crash.
• State-Backed Rare Earth Rebuilding - later policy response to the failure of purely market-financed revival.