A court-appointed trustee for bankrupt Molycorp Minerals LLC will ask a judge Friday to approve the sale of the last remaining assets associated with a rare-earth mine at Mountain Pass, Calif. But a lawsuit over mineral rights and complaints by the losing bidder for those assets are complicating efforts to reopen the mine, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The dispute pits Oaktree Capital Management LP, which owns the most advanced ore processing equipment at the mine, against JHL Capital Group and QVT Financial LP, which control the most important mineral rights at the site. All of them held debt in Molycorp’s now-defunct parent, Molycorp Inc. until they traded their $1.9 billion in claims for different parts of the company. The court-appointed trustee held an auction on June 14 for the remaining parts of the mine hoping to attract a buyer to restart production and take responsibility for about $100 million in cleanup costs.
