USA Rare Earth LLC, an 80 percent operator and owner of the Round Top heavy rare earth, lithium, and critical minerals project in Hudspeth County, Texas, along with its joint venture partner Texas Mineral Resources Corp. will produce nearly half of the U.S. critical minerals list.

The Inner Mongolia region in northern China aims to quintuple the value of rare earths production by 2025. This comes as China's near-absolute dominance of global supply has raised concerns that it could be used as a bargaining chip.

The study, led by a team from the University of St. Andrews' School of Earth and Environmental Sciences and published in the journal Geology, sheds new light on how hot volcanic fluids concentrate rare earth metals and how these metals leach out of magma bodies.

Executives from Houston Pipeline and LNG warned about the imbalance in rare earth minerals, and the two Houston executives with closer ties to natural gas spent a large part of their discussions focusing on another natural resource.