Does Venezuela Have Rare Earths? What Is Known

Venezuela has no proven rare earth reserves. The U.S. Geological Survey, the global reference, does not list Venezuela among countries with rare earth production or reserves in its 2026 report. What the country does have is geological evidence, mainly at Cerro Impacto, a carbonatite deposit in the south where sample analyses from the 1970s and 1980s found high concentrations of cerium, lanthanum and neodymium. It takes years of exploration to turn evidence like that into a reserve, and in Venezuela that work has not been done, or has not been published.

What are rare earths?

They are 17 chemical elements, including neodymium, lanthanum and cerium, used in electric-motor magnets, wind turbines, electronics and defense. They are not as rare as the name suggests, but separating and refining them is hard and expensive. That is why a country can have them in the ground and produce none.

What is known about Venezuela

Cerro Impacto

This is the most concrete evidence. According to the USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS):

• It is a carbonatite complex, the rock type that hosts some of the world’s major rare earth deposits. It intrudes the Cuchivero granitic province.
• Laterite (the weathered surface soil) samples showed up to 7% cerium, 3% lanthanum and 0.8% neodymium, plus niobium (up to 1.5%) and thorium (up to 0.5%), according to a 1986 study.
• The 1973 and 1978 Venezuelan Ministry of Mines studies cited by the USGS place it in the Cedeño district of Bolívar state. Other sources place it in Amazonas, in the border area between the two states.

What those numbers mean: they are concentrations in samples, not tons and not reserves. Thorium is also radioactive, which makes processing harder and more expensive.

The decrees

• Decree 4,598 (Official Gazette No. 42,230, October 8, 2021) declared minerals associated with rare earths strategic and reserved them to the executive, together with cassiterite, nickel, rhodium and titanium.
• A decree naming a mineral does not prove there are reserves. Those decrees also rested on a 2015 reservation law that the 2026 Organic Mining Law repealed. The new law lets the government declare strategic minerals by decree again. The sources reviewed do not yet show whether this decree was confirmed.

U.S. interest

On March 4, 2026, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum traveled to Caracas for talks that included a possible rare earth partnership. According to Fox Business, Washington sees Venezuela’s untapped resources as an alternative to relying on China for critical minerals. Neither the article nor the government gave any reserve figure.

Rare earths are not coltan

The two are often confused:

• Coltan is the ore of two metals, niobium and tantalum, used in capacitors and electronics. They are not rare earths.
• Venezuela has known coltan deposits, but CSIS notes there is no industrial-scale mining. A 2016 decree declared niobium and tantalum strategic, according to a timeline by the NGO Provea.
• Niobium and rare earths occur together at Cerro Impacto, which adds to the confusion.

Why big numbers circulate

Since 2016, estimates of hundreds of thousands of tons have circulated in the press and on social media. We have found no published geological study that supports them. Until modern exploration produces drill results, grades and tonnages, any figure for Venezuelan rare earth reserves is a claim, not data.

What is still unknown

• The real size of Cerro Impacto, and whether its concentrations are mineable.
• Whether there are other deposits in the Guiana Shield.
• Whether the strategic-mineral decree was confirmed under the 2026 law.

To see which minerals Venezuela actually produces, read Venezuela Minerals: List, Locations and the Most Valuable.