The Fen Complex is a unique geological area, just outside Ulefoss in Nome municipality, which contains several unusual rocks and minerals. Not least, the area contains critical and strategic raw materials of great importance for the green and digital transformation.
Author: Tor Espen Simonsen
Published: 14 Nov, 2023
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Updated: 22 Dec, 2023
The Fen Complex is the remains of an ancient limestone volcano which was active 580 million years ago. The ravages of time, helped by several ice ages, have worn the volcano down. Beneath the forest, soil and clay, the Fen-volcano's old supply veins are still to be found, and it is these that today contain rare and important minerals that are required to manufacture a wide selection of electrical components and high-tech products.
Some of the raw materials in the depths beneath the small village of Fen can become a starting point for new industry in the green economy, and become of great importance for Norway when the oil age comes to an end. In this context, the critical raw material REE is of particular importance. Rare earths elementsREE), is considered a key factor in implementing the green transformation. Since 2019, Fen is believed to hold the largest deposit of these critical raw materials in Europe.
Historically, the Fen Complex is best known for containing the iron ore that in 1657 laid the foundation for the country's oldest company, Ulefos Jernværk. The business started as a war industry, with the production of cannons and bullets for European conflicts, but today the company produces manhole covers and other goods.
Since the 17th century and right up to the present day, international crises and profound developments in society have been the driving force behind interest in the Fen Complex and its mineral resources.
In addition, we see that a world in turmoil, with the rivalry between the USA and China and the dramatic war in Ukraine, is making the Fen Complex a focal point of attention. Rare earths are as well considered strategic raw materials and are important for large parts of the defense industry.
Read more:
What are rare earths used for?
Already in 1955, the geologist Harald Bjørlykke had discovered REE's in the Gruveåsen (The Mining Hill), and an official research group carried out investigations in the years 1967 to 1971, without much success. Also in the decades after AS Norsk Bergverk shut down the old Søve mines in 1965, the Fen Complex has seen several waves of exploration activity, mapping and commercial interest around possible new mining operations.
Interest has focused both on thorium and rare earths.
In 2008, the Thorium committee presented its report on behalf of the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, and research into the use of thorium in a commercial context has continued in the following years as well. As recently as 2013, under the auspices of Thor Energy AS, thorium was burned from the Fen Complex in the research reactor in Halden.
The focus on thorium culminated in 2008 then the Thorium committee cast doubt on whether it is possible to extract the thorium found in the Fen Complex.
A few years later, the Fen Complex came back into the spotlight. In 2011, a private operator carried out the first trial drilling for rare earths in areas that had previously been considered less interesting for exploration activity.
The investigations showed what could be viable deposits of rare earths in a rock where the content of radioactive thorium is also relatively low. At about the same time as this new development on the Fen Complex, the EU also began to classify rare earths as critical raw materials.
In the following years, several drilling programs have confirmed the first positive findings from 2011. In 2018, NGU carried out two deep drillings to 1,000 metres, and in 2019 Geological Advisor Sven Dahlgren presented his report. There it was established for the first time that the Fen Complex probably contains Europe's largest deposit of rare earths.
The conclusion of the report is that it is now the industry's turn to survey the possibilities for commercial mineral activities.
The shift towards rare earth in 2011 had to do whit an incident in the East China Sea in the autumn of the previous year. A minor territorial dispute between China and Japan over the Senkaku Islands ended with China imposing an export freeze of rare earths to technology giant Japan.
In the short term, the event led to a steep increase in the prices of REE. This affected many Western countries that depend on imports from China. Disruptions in the supply of these raw materials have major economic and political consequences, not least since it is difficult to replace rare earths with other materials.
In the longer run, the conflict between China and Japan led many countries to intensify efforts to find alternative supplies and reduce dependence on China.
Throughout much of the Cold War, the United States had been the world leader in the market for rare earths. From the mid-1980s, the country was overtaken by a China with great ambitions to control the value chain around these strategically important raw materials.
China's powerful leader, Deng Xiaoping, was the man who initiated the country's violent economic expansion from 1978. In 1987, he has said that «The Middle East has oil, China has rare earths» («Midtøsten har olje, Kina har sjeldne jordarter»).
The quote is often used to illustrate China's long-term goal of building up its position as a great power at all levels.
In recent years, several international events have led to increased attention to Europe's import dependence from countries such as China: the trade war between the US and China from 2019, the corona pandemic in 2020 and the Ukraine war from 2022.
The question many are now asking is whether Norway and the Fen Complex can answer some of the great need the world has for access to important raw materials in the years ahead.
It was the sharp increase in the price of rare earths from the autumn of 2010, which directly led to a private research company taking the first samples in the Fen Complex as early as 2011. In 2023, just over ten years later, Norway's mineral strategy was presented.
There we can read, among other things, that:
"At the top of the EU's list of supply risks related to critical raw materials are the rare earth elements (REE). Norway has several interesting deposits of rare earths, the most important of which is the Fen Complex at Ulefoss in Telemark. The Fen Complex may turn out to be Europe's largest deposit of rare earths."
The strategy also states that the Fen Complex "has the potential to become a very important project for Norway." At the same time, there may be a need for special measures to ensure rapid progress for a possible recovery".
Many people wonder when new mining can start up in the Fen Complex, how many jobs it would create and what consequences mining would have for the local community and nature? Other questions may concern natural radioactivity in the bedrock and treatment of tailings and waste.
The status today is that the projects on the Fen Complex are still at an early stage of development. Many of the questions asked about mining are therefore impossible to answer now.
This map from Direktoratet for mineralforvaltning shows who has rights on the Fen Complex.
Read more:
This is what future mining could look like
Fensfelet.no is owned by Nome municipality and Midt-Telemark og Nome utvikling AS (MTNU). The purpose of the website is to provide good and objective information about the Fen Complex to anyone who is interested.
