The world’s largest refinery for rare earth metals…could soon obtain permission to operate…The progress toward opening the plant has occurred despite…the withdrawal of a major equipment supplier worried about the safety of the refinery…being built by Lynas, an Australian company…One setback for Lynas project is that…Azko Nobel pulled out…[Azko] said last spring that it would supply chemicals for the Lynas project only if it were certain that it would be safe…Azko withdrew from supplying the chemicals [due to] safety concerns…That testing cannot be completed within the current project time scale”…[T]he chairman of Lynas confirmed that Azko Nobel had pulled out of the project but he insisted that it was not for safety reasons…