Played a game a few hours ago where I decided to switch my river valley MULEs to Crystite. 2 things happened of note:
1) Originally, you were not allowed to do this, quoteth the back of the game manual:
"You may not mine Crystite or Smithore in the River Valley."
2) These plots were not counted towards my energy requirements during the previous round's auction
3) Energy was not consumed for these plots.
I'm guessing that the developers need to fix this by resolving #1 - then #2 and #3 are academic.