Arguing that while it is “possible to produce them here” he says that “onerous federal rules make it extremely difficult,”adding that “[w]e cannot sit idly by and hope our U.S. mining industry can cut through the red tape currently strangling it.”

Sen. Risch points to the long-standing and, against the backdrop of surging demand, increasingly dangerous practice of over-relying on foreign – and especially Chinese supplies of critical minerals, which has given our adversaries significant leverage over us. The senator points to China’s penchant for weaponizing the mineral supply chain, with recent examples being the restriction of gallium and germanium exports — key components of semiconductor production and defense technology, arguing that “[i]t is only a matter of time before China decides to punish the U.S. and ur allies again by holding minerals hostage. That will even apply to minerals that are mined in the U.S. but processed in China, like copper.”

Meanwhile, one of the key obstacles to increased domestic mining and processing according to Sen. Risch, is the Biden administration, under whose guise a “working group on mining regulations released recommendations that, if implemented would transition mineral rights to a leasing program and add a dirt tax to every shovelful of ore, regardless of the value of the mineral,” which, according to the senator “would add years to the already lengthy permitting process and stifle investment in mining projects.”

Followers of ARPN are familiar with the average permitting timeframe for mining projects of roughly seven to ten years.  Litigation from NIMBY environmental groups — Sen. Risch points to the Rosemont decision in the Ninth Circuit Court which “changed the interpretation of long-established mining law” and “hampers the industry while making mining significantly less efficient and cost-effective”– can further add years to the already onerous process.

With even U.S. car companies requesting that the Biden administration speed up the mine permitting process, a consensus is growing that reform should be a national priority.

Sen. Risch points to the U.S. Department of Defense being an outlier in the administration and having recognized the “danger we face, which is why it is awarding grants to critical mining projects.”  The senator highlights the stibnite gold project in the central region of his home state of Idaho, where Perpetua Resources is working to be the sole domestic source of antimony, a key component of military technology.

But of course, as followers of ARPN know, there are more projects receiving DoD support with even more expected to be announced on a rolling basis.

In ARPN’s latest post on the blog, we pointed a series of Presidential Determinations involving specific critical minerals which laid the foundation for this type of funding under Defense Production Act Title III authority.

Current projects, recently highlighted by Oregon Group’s Anthony Milewski, include:

• Graphite: a $37.5 million agreement between the DoD and Graphite One (Alaska) to fast-track a domestic graphite mine;
• Antimony (as highlighted by Sen. Risch): two awards — $24.8 million and $15.5 million — by the DoD to Perpetua Resources to secure a domestic source of antimony [an additional conditional award of up to $34.6 million under the existing Technology Investment Agreement was announced earlier last month];
• Lithium: a $90million agreement to secure lithium production between the DoD and Abermarle;
• Nickel: a US $20.6 million agreement between the DoD and Talon Nickel to increase domestic nickel production.

Closes Sen. Risch:

“Every aspect of our society and security relies on processed minerals and would therefore benefit from expedited permitting and easier access. We cannot afford to wait until China reduces or even cuts off our access to critical minerals.

It is time for America to see the power of the U.S. mining industry, invest in it, and secure our supply chains. The technology we depend on every day is only possible because of mining. To ensure not just our economic success but our national security, Congress must revamp our mining laws and substantially reduce irrelevant regulations.”

The stakes are getting higher by the day, and, as ARPN’s Daniel McGroarty pointed out years ago, “we can’t admire the problem any longer” because “we don’t have the luxury of time.” However, we are dealing with Washington, D.C., and the question is whether Congressional stakeholders will finally be able to put policy over politics in an election year.

The post U.S. Senator: Embrace Domestic Mining and Processing of Critical Minerals “Before It’s Too Late” appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Milewski points to Russia having fired an estimated 11 million artillery shells in 2022, the majority of which can contain – depending on shell and manufacturing process – at least an estimate 0.5kg of copper. This, he says would amount to 5,500 tons of copper, or the equivalent of copper used in 1,170 wind turbines.

Copper demand is already forecast to increase by more than 100% by 2035 with many analysts warning there may not be enough copper to meet decarbonization goals in the next few decades after years of underinvestment in the mining industry and falling ore grades.  And those projections, according to Milewski, do not account for surging military demand against the backdrop of increasing geopolitical volatility around the globe.

Of course, copper is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg. According to the National Mining Association, the U.S. Department of Defense uses nearly 750,000 tons of minerals on an annual basis – a number that was calculated around 2016/2017 at a time when the U.S. was not facing any major conflicts.

Fast-forward to 2024 and the U.S. is supporting allies in the Ukraine and Israel while the situation in the Taiwan Strait looks increasing vulnerable.  Meanwhile, particularly ammunition stockpiles are running so low that NATO officials have warned that Western militaries are scraping “the bottom of the barrel” forcing NATO to provide Ukraine with supplies not from full warehouses, but rather “half-full or lower warehouses in Europe.”

The issue is compounded by the fact that production time to rebuild weaponry stocks can take anywhere between three and 18 years, depending on equipment according to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies – however that analysis focuses only on manufacturing and production times.

As followers of ARPN well know, supply chains for the metals and minerals underpinning U.S. military technology and munitions are “extremely vulnerable” due to a perennial over-reliance on supplies from adversary nations, i.e. China.

For all the talk about decoupling supply chains in recent years, the needle has not moved much, and the latest USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries still has the U.S. 100% import reliant for 12 metals and minerals, while an additional 29 critical mineral commodities had a net import reliance greater than 50% of apparent consumption — a small drop by two over last year’s report.

However, some important steps have been taken in recent years, and are beginning to bear fruit. Milewski lists several military budget ramp-ups to “try and resolve the massive shortfall.”

As ARPN previously outlined, a notable example of such efforts is the series of (Defense Production Act) DPA Presidential Determinations involving specific Critical Minerals, beginning with President Trump’s July 2019 designation of the Rare Earth permanent magnet supply chain as being “essential for the national defense,” followed by President Biden’s designation of what ARPN calls the “Battery Criticals” as DPA Title III eligible in March 2022, followed by Platinum and Palladium in a DPA Presidential Determination in June 2022.  Earlier this spring, two further Presidential Determinations (February 27, 2023 Presidential Determination, and DPA Presidential Determination (2023-5)), effectively created an entirely new category of critical minerals – “Defense Criticals” as ARPN calls them – by way of designating airbreathing engines, advanced avionics navigation and guidance systems, and hypersonic systems and their “constituent materials” as priority DPA materials.

Those DPA actions, funded by Congressional appropriations, are now producing Department of Defense funded projects to encourage domestic development of these “defense criticals” and their supply chains.

Milewski highlights the following:

• Graphite: a $37.5 million agreement between the DoD and Graphite One (Alaska) to fast-track a domestic graphite mine;
• Antimony: two awards — $24.8 million and $15.5 million — by the DoD to Perpetua Resources to secure a domestic source of antimony [an additional conditional award of up to $34.6 million under the existing Technology Investment Agreement was announced earlier this week];
•  Lithium: a $90million agreement to secure lithium production between the DoD and Abermarle;
• Nickel: a US $20.6 million agreement between the DoD and Talon Nickel to increase domestic nickel production.

He closes:

“We see the U.S. military shifting its position and capacity to secure its critical mineral supply gaining more momentum than it has for arguably the past 30 years. However, the U.S. military is America’s largest government agency, and it will take time.”

However, with conflict brewing in many parts of the world, time is a luxury we do not have, and strengthening critical mineral supply chains should be a key priority for policy stakeholders in 2024.

The post U.S. Military Faces Compounding Problems – Surging Tensions, Depleted Stockpiles, Critical Mineral Supply Chain Challenges appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

– A Look at 2023
Through the Prism of Critical Mineral Resource Policy - 

In the waning days of December 2022, ARPN and others were gearing up for a watershed year in the critical minerals realm – a year which could be a “breaking point if there is to be an EV revolution/transformation,” and one that would give us a glimpse into the new world order in the Post Petro Age in which the sands of geopolitics have shifted.

We set out to track the following themes, all of which we found to be intertwined:

• A focus on the Super Criticals (see our Year in Review post for more info);
• the growing importance of geopolitics, with China taking center stage and alliances and partnerships continuing to be forged to reduce reliance on Beijing;
• the acceleration of the green energy transition which will require vast amounts of critical minerals;
• as well as industry’s efforts to sustainably green our future by harnessing the materials science revolution.

As we close out 2023 with ARPN’s annual attempt to take stock of what has happened on the critical mineral resources front in the past 12 months — to assess where we are, and, filled with hope for a New Year, where we are headed – we believe we picked the right themes.

2023 – Enter the Post-Petro Tech Age?

Early 2023

Geopolitics certainly took center stage on the critical minerals front with the Russia/Ukraine war continuing to place a strain on global supply chains and resource nationalism gaining a bigger foothold in particularly the Southern hemisphere.

As Peter Schechter and Juan Cortiñas had outlined in a February 2022 piece for Marsh McLennan’s Brink News ARPN featured at the time, the shunning of laissez-faire economics, particularly in Latin America, is not new. “What’s different this time,” they say, “is that these new interventionist policies are not only focused on the traditional energy sector. Instead, the region’s attention is turning to increasingly valuable minerals that are key to the new green economy quickly gaining momentum across the world.”  

Resource Nationalism 

In early 2023, we saw this trend play out in Chile, where President Gabriel Boric announced his plan to nationalize the country’s lithium industry to boost the Latin American nation’s industrial base and protect the environment.  While his plan fell short of full nationalization, observers called Boric’s announcement a “shock move”  – but it was one that tied into an overall trend in the region:

Chile’s move came on the heels of a comprehensive lithium nationalization plan enacted by Mexico which culminated in President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador signing a decree handing over responsibility for lithium reserves to the country’s energy ministry in February of this year.

Bolivia’s ruling socialists have also favored state control over the nation’s vast untapped mineral resources but are relying on Chinese partners to harness them.

Meanwhile, some speculated at the time that had it not been for his ouster, Peru’s President Pedro Castillo, who won a narrow victory in 2021 and had initially pledged to nationalize much of the country’s mining sector, might have pursued an approach similar to Boric’s in Chile.

The moves tied into a bigger trend, as indicated by prior similar developments in Indonesia, Myanmar and Zimbabwe.

 Tech War Theaters – Semiconductors and Critical Minerals 

Meanwhile, the Tech Wars between China and the West continued to intensify, and Western nations began taking steps to counter Chinese dominance in the critical minerals realm.

A key theater of the Tech Wars had emerged: Semiconductors, which have become indispensable components for a broad range of electronic devices. Semiconductors have been dubbed the “DNA of technology” which has “transformed essentially all segments of the economy” and are critical to national security where they enable the “development and fielding of advanced weapons systems and control toe operation of the nation’s critical infrastructure,” as the Department of Commerce-led chapter in the Biden Administration’s 100 Day Supply Chain Review report outlines.

While the U.S. took steps to impose new export controls to China’s access to advanced computing chips, its ability to develop and maintain super computers and manufacture semiconductors in 2022, Washington’s allies in Europe, Japan, Canada, Australia also took steps to reduce Chinese influence in their critical mineral industries. The governments of the Netherlands and Japan announced their intention to emulate the U.S. export controls in March.

A late 2022 proposal to bolster the Investment Canada Act (ICA) to empower government ministers to block or unwind critical mineral investments if these are considered as a threat to national security, considered a defensive measure against China which has invested $7 billion in Canada’s base metals sector in the past two decades, was expected to be finalized in the spring.

Australia’s Treasurer Jim Chalmers in early 2022 blocked a request by a Chinese company to boost its investment in Australian REE company Northern Minerals via a prevention order, the first move of this kind since the Treasurer had expressed concerns over the “concentrated nature of the China-dominated critical minerals supply chain” elevated by the Russia-Ukraine war, and a move that some considered a “sign of what’s to come.”

West Bolsters Domestic Supply Chains 

While these steps were taken to reduce Chinese influence over domestic industries, the West also stepped up efforts to strengthen its own critical mineral policies and sectors.

The European Union released its long-awaited action plan to “ensure the EU’s access to a secure, diversified, affordable and sustainable supply of critical raw materials” on March 16. The Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA)  includes a comprehensive set of actions aimed at shoring up European critical mineral supply chains by streamlining the permitting process for raw materials projects and allowing for selected “Strategic Projects” to benefit from support for access to financing and shorter permitting timelines (24 months for extraction permits and 12 months for processing and recycling permits).  The Act – which was finalized later in the year, also requires EU member states to develop national programs for resource exploration.

Australia also forged ahead with its push to strengthen critical mineral supply chains for its own industries and for the benefit of its partners with the federal government in Canberra releasing guidelines for “new grants to help develop Australia’s critical minerals sector, support downstream processing, create jobs across regional Australia and support global efforts to achieve net-zero” in early 2023.

The Canadian government, which had launched the Canadian Critical Minerals Strategy in December of 2022 backed by up to $3.8 billion in funding, announced details on the implementation and a first round of funding for new critical minerals programs and initiatives.

The Minerals Security Partnership (MSP), an initiative to bolster critical mineral supply chains while ensuring that “critical minerals are produced, processed and recycled in a manner that supports the ability of countries to realize the full economic development benefit of their geological endowments”  took its collaboration to the next level by formalizing and agreeing on guiding principles for how the MSP will develop projects around the world with local value-add, sustainability, and high environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards front and center. Meetings were followed by bilateral trade agreements as well as U.S.-EU discussions to launch a “critical minerals club.”

And stateside, U.S. President Joe Biden once more invoked Title III of the Defense Production Act (DPA) to strengthen critical mineral supply chains – and in doing so, effectively created a new category of Critical Materials – which ARPN has dubbed the Defense Criticals (see our post here). His February 27, 2023 Presidential Determination was followed by another DPA Presidential Determination (2023-5), designating airbreathing engines, advanced avionics navigation and guidance systems, and hypersonic systems and their “constituent materials” as priority DPA materials.

Mid 2023

We posited in early 2023, that against the backdrop of surging demand and geopolitical volatility, we could expect to see more active government involvement in the critical minerals sector – and the coming months certainly delivered.

China Tightens Export Ratches as West Gets Reality Check on Decoupling

In July, China upped the ante in the Tech Wars by placing export restrictions on gallium and germanium – key components of semiconductor, defense and solar technologies. Beijing’s move was considered a “show of force ahead of economic talks between two rivals that increasingly set trade rules to achieve technological dominance,” according to the Wall Street Journal. As Alastair Neill, board member of the Critical Minerals Institute, told the Wall Street Journal: “If you don’t send high-end chips to China, China will respond by not sending you the high-performance elements you need for those chips.” 

While some chipmakers downplayed fears of shortages, former Chinese Vice Commerce Minister Wei Jianguo’s comments to the China Daily newspaper “that countries should brace for more should they continue to pressure China, describing the controls as a ‘well-thought-out heavy punch’ and ‘just a start,’”  prompted fears that more export curbs on critical materials, including on rare earths could be on the menu, and analysts called for  big investments on the part of the United States and its partners to reduce their reliance on China.

Later that month, China announced a new set of export controls — this one on certain drones and drone-related equipment — to “safeguard national security interests,” only to follow it up with restrictions on graphite later in October. The decision to require export permits for certain graphite products was seen by analysts as a play “to control supplies of critical minerals in response to challenges over its global manufacturing dominance.”

China’s moves also underscored the massive challenge of decoupling for Western nations.  In the case of graphite, which is the largest component by volume and mass in EV batteries and has been deemed the “unsung player” in the battery supply chain, China “is on track to retain over 85% of the global anode market share by the end of the decade,” according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.

While momentum to decouple was continuing to build, a new report by the consultancy Rhodium Group and the German Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) pointed to the real-world challenges of decoupling from China from a European perspective:

European national governments and the EU may have worked to devise policies to strengthen domestic and regional critical mineral supply chains, but Chinese companies continued to invest in the region: Overall, Chinese foreign direct investment in the EU and the UK dropped, but, as Mary Hui writes for Quartz, “for the first time since 2008, the value of Chinese greenfield investments have exceeded that of M&A flows,” and was “mainly driven by several large-scale initiatives by Chinese battery giants to build factories in Germany, Hungary, the UK, and France.”

As the Rhodium report determined, “Europe has become a key part of China’s global electric vehicle expansions,” adding that “[b]attery investments are now the mainstay of Chinese investment in Europe.” The emerging conundrum is not lost on EU policy makers, who resolved to formally “recalibrate” the EU’s China policy, with an emphasis on “de-risking” by screening investments more closely and resorting to more robust export controls.

The West’s resolve to break China’s dominance may be building, but as Christina Lu wrote for Foreign Policy:

“(…) there are more questions than answers about how these efforts will pan out. As lawmakers continue to hammer out new agreements behind closed doors, it remains unclear how they align with global trading rules and what this momentum means for countries that lack free trade agreements with the United States. Engineering supply chains isn’t as simple as finding new mines, either; it involves an entire ecosystem of processing, refining, and manufacturing capabilities.”

The Rise of Geopolitical Swing States

As the West continued to assess its options against the backdrop of an increasingly assertive China leveraging its advantage in the Tech Wars, a new class of states have entered the spotlight in the context of the global geopolitical realignment – the “geopolitical swing states,” as Goldman Sachs’s Jared Cohen suggested this June, and their role could grow exponentially in the coming years.

Cohen defines a geopolitical swing state as “critical to the world economy and balance of power” but without “the capacity by themselves to drive the global agenda, at least for now.” He adds that “as long as the tensions between the U.S. and China continue to get worse, they will have outsized abilities to navigate geopolitical competition and take advantage of and influence it.” 

According to Cohen, there are four – often overlapping — categories of geopolitical swing states:

• Countries with a competitive advantage in a critical aspect of global supply chains;
• Countries with a unique ability to make themselves attractive for nearshoring, offshoring, or friend-shoring;
• Countries with a disproportionate amount of capital and willingness to deploy it around the world in pursuit of strategic objectives; and
• Countries with developed economies and leaders who have global visions that they pursue within certain constraints.

As Cohen concluded, “[t]he rise of geopolitical swing states may balance the great powers and help stabilize the global order. Their interest-based decision-making could be a source of consistency in uncertain times. Or their newfound prominence may increase global instability by putting more actors and variables in play. But even if today’s world is not yet multipolar, a rising group of countries recognize that they can determine the course of world events. Those geopolitical swing states are aware that their power may be unsustainable, or event fleeting and they are determined to take advantage of the current window of opportunity.”

While the rise of the geopolitical swing states has business implications for multinational businesses and investors, these trendlines are have real-world implications for U.S. stakeholders from a policy perspective, and, in the critical mineral resource realm, underscore the importance of a comprehensive all-of-the-above approach to securing critical mineral resource supply chains.

Fall/Winter 2023 

Critical Mineral Focus Grows, New Players Emerge

Meanwhile, real world challenges associated with securing supplies for the metals and minerals underpinning 21st Century technology prompted more countries to emphasize supply chain security and define their own sets of metals and minerals critical to their own domestic industries.

Perhaps most consequential in light of the fact that it has overtaken China as the most populous country in the world this year, may be India’s push onto the global critical minerals stage.  Following the release of a comprehensive Critical Minerals List, consisting of 30 metals and minerals deemed critical for India’s ambition for cleaner technologies in electronics, telecommunications, transport and defense, in the summer, along with a pledge to encourage public and private investment in exploration, mining and processing to secure the country’s critical mineral supply chains, India announced its consideration of an export ban on four key metals – lithium, beryllium, niobium and tantalum – in a move to ensure the country’s self-sufficiency in crucial minerals for India’s national security and technological advancements. In late November, the Indian government announced its first ever auction of critical mineral leases for commercial mining by the private sector.

But another player has arrived – perhaps in another indication that we have indeed entered the Post-Petro Tech Metals Age: Saudi Arabia.

As part of his Grand Vision 2030 plan to transform the Saudi economy, the oil giant’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman is preparing to invest billions of dollars into the mining sector to harness the potential of more than $1.3 trillion worth of metals and minerals the Saudi government claims are buried in the kingdom, and effectively make mining the so-called “third pillar” of the economy next to oil and gas. Rumors of a deal with Tesla have been swirling, even though they have been denied by Elon Musk himself.

Analysts say that while the crown prince’s plans are met with plenty of skepticism, even if only partially successful, implications of Saudi Arabia turning into a metals hub could have far-reaching implications not just for metals mining, but geopolitics and trade, especially if the other component of the crown prince’s plan to buy up resources from elsewhere to be refined and processed at new facilities in Saudi Arabia.

As Bloomberg reports, the kingdom’s long game is to position itself as an alternative supplier to China for the metals and minerals underpinning the green energy shift and 21st Century technologies.  The news outlet cites Khalid Al Mudaifer, vice minister of mining affairs, who said in an interview that “Saudi Arabia needs more than one engine to achieve its vision,” and that to transform itself into an economic and industrial powerhouse, the kingdom needs minerals.

Global Tensions Mount – Gaza and Tech War Confrontation

If the watershed moment for geopolitics in 2022 was the Russian invasion of Ukraine, this year’s defining moment was probably the Hamas-led incursion from the Gaza Strip into the Gaza envelope of neighboring Israeli territory on October 7, 2023, which initiated the ongoing Israel-Hamas War. Throwing a wrench into arguably efforts to de-escalate tensions in the Middle East, the conflict threatens domestic stability in many states in the region and has exposed the deep-rooted nature of obstacles to normalization.

While China has claimed neutrality and has called on both sides to exercise restraint, China, while criticizing Israel’s massive bombardment of Gaza in response to the incursion, but never officially condemned the initial attack started by Hamas. Experts believe that the Israel-Hamas war is viewed in Beijing as a convenient opportunity to gain ground against the United States in the battle for influence in the Arab world, as tensions between China and the West, and specifically the U.S. continue to mount. 

As Hot Wars Rage, All Arrows Point to Escalation of Tech War 

 With hot wars raging in Central Europe and the Middle East, the question is, do we have bandwidth to focus on a war that’s metaphorical – for now, at least:  The Tech War pitting China versus the U.S.?

While the recent meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the APEC summit in San Francisco last month was seen by some as a step towards alleviating tension between the two global powers, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo’s latest speech and subsequent comments at the Reagan National Defense Forum in California left no doubt that, at least on the trade front, all arrows very much point to confrontation.

The Secretary did not mince words, stating: “(…) make no mistake about it, China’s not our friend, and we need to be eyes wide open about the extent of that threat. I am ready to win, and I’m ready to do that with all of you, but it’s time to open our aperture and challenge the way we’ve done business in every way if we’re going to meet the threat China poses.”

When asked if there were other U.S. origin products or types of technologies that the U.S. Government was “looking at in a similar fashion right now” – i.e. would consider imposing export controls on, she said:

“Absolutely, in biotechnology, AI models, AI products, cloud computing, supercomputing. So short answer is yes.”

Unsurprisingly, China has already voiced criticism of Raimondo’s comments with officials lamenting the “Cold War mentality” on the part of the U.S. which showed its “desire for hegemony.”

Diplomatic efforts to improve ties between the countries in the wake of Raimondo’s remarks may continue but to the keen observer it appears all but certain at this point that we’ll be seeing a further escalation of the Tech Wars in the coming months, with the export control ratchet playing a central role.

The question is, which critical mineral will find itself in the crosshairs this time. 

Turning the Same Stone Twice

With more confrontation on the horizon, there are some silver linings, thankfully.  Not only are domestic policy stakeholders more attuned to the critical minerals challenge and are working on policy solutions including permitting reform, the mining industry itself has been stepping up its game.

In their quest to secure critical mineral supply chains against the backdrop of surging demand and rising geopolitical pressures, stakeholders are leaving no stone unturned – quite literally — and have in fact begun turning the same stone twice, harnessing the materials science revolution to unlock minerals that were previously bound up, and extracting minerals from unconventional sources such as rock piles and tailings.

In 2023, ARPN featured several of these initiatives:

• The “Atlas of Australian Mine Waste”, an Australian government mapping project of sites containing mine waste with reprocessing potential,
• The USGS’s solicitation for proposals for FY2023 grants to collect data on mine waste using funds from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act in the context of the Earth Mapping Resources Initiative (Earth MRI), in the context of which more than $5.8 million will go towards mapping critical-mineral resources in Alaska in partnership with the Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys. Minerals included in the context of USGS and the Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical Survey research projects Alaska are: Arsenic, antimony, bismuth, cobalt, graphite, indium, platinum group metals, rare earth elements, tantalum, tellurium and tin.
• Australia-based New Century Resources current operation of the largest tailings retreatment operation at its zinc tailings retreatment operation in Queensland,
• A Reuters lists of six major projects outside of China aimed at extracting the critical minerals from waste or byproducts, including Iluka Resources Ltd’s and VHM Ltd’s operations in Australia, Rainbow Rare Earths Ltd’s endeavor in northeast South Africa, Swedish state-owned LKAB’s plans to extract REEs from two existing mines, and two U.S. operations:

• Phoenix Tailings, a privately held U.S. company plans to launch operations using waste materials from a former iron ore mine in New York using its own processing technology.

• U.S. Energy Fuels, originally focused on uranium production, started acquiring monazite, a byproduct of mineral sands, to extract REEs with plans to open its own separation plant by 2024.

• Global miner Rio Tinto’s production of tellurium at its Kennecott copper operation in Utah, where roughly 20 tons of the material are generated from by-product streams generated during the copper refining process; and the company’s partnership with CR Minerals Co. LLC to extract a material called pozzolans from Rio Tinto’s Boron California operations, which can be substituted for or combined with cement to decarbonization construction materials. Meanwhile, in Canada, the miner is producing scandium from titanium waste, becoming the first North American producer of scandium in the process.
• The October 2023 Fortune Minerals/Rio Tinto announcement of a collaboration to develop technology to improve the recovery of cobalt and bismuth from co-product streams of minerals recovered at Rio Tinto’s Kennecott smelter in Utah which will be processed at Fortune Minerals’s smelter operations.

As the materials science revolution marches on and continues to unlock new technologies allowing for the safe and commercially viable recovery of mine waste tailings, harnessing this – to date largely untapped — potential could play a significant role in a comprehensive “all-of-the-above” approach to bolstering critical mineral supply chains.

U.S. Supply Chain Initiative, Plan to Release National Defense Industrial Strategy

On the policy front, the Biden Administration recently announced new steps to bolster supply chains for U.S. domestic industries. One highly anticipated component with implications for the critical minerals sector is the Department of Defense’s release of a first ever National Defense Industrial Strategy (NDIS), which, according to the White House, “will guide engagement, policy development, and investment in the defense industrial base over the next three to five years.”

2023 – Metals in Focus

From Battery Criticals to Defense Criticals, and Copper’s Rising Star

In keeping with last year’s trend lines, ARPN-dubbed Battery Criticals – Lithium, Cobalt, Graphite, Nickel and Manganese – continued to dominate the critical minerals discourse (along with the Rare Earths) against the backdrop of surging needs of the green energy transition.

See our coverage of these materials here.

As previously outlined, however, President Biden’s invocation of Title III of the DPA effectively created a new category of Critical Materials – which ARPN has dubbed the Defense Criticals – a whopping list of 35:

See our post with more context here.  

Meanwhile, one mainstay metal’s star has continued to rise in 2023 – Copper. 

Copper prices may have dropped, however demand for the metal, which is not only a key mainstay metal, but also an indispensable component in green energy technology, is expected to increase drastically to keep pace with the material requirements of the global push towards net zero carbon emissions.

According to the Financial Times, its growing application in this field will result “in it being dubbed the ‘metal of electrification’, with forecasts that it will double to a 50mn tonne market by 2035 compared with 2021 levels, according to S&P Global, which predicts a ‘chronic gap’ between supply and demand.”

While U.S. import reliance for copper hovered around 30 to 35 percent in the 2010s, that number has gone up to more than 40 percent in the 2020s, according to the USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries. 

Miners are pointing out that a confluence of complex permitting timelines, rising inflation and the fact that the commodity is “harder to find in high quantities in the ground” may have led to a situation “where it’s likely there won’t be enough copper to meet decarbonization goals in the next few decades.”

While Copper is a key component of technology in the context of decarbonization efforts, the material was left off the overall U.S. government’s critical minerals list. Congressional efforts to change this may have not succeeded in 2023, but the Department of Energy designated the material a critical material as part of its 2023 Critical Materials Assessment, further raising the material’s clout.

Meanwhile, on December 16, 2023, the Australian government released an update to its list of critical minerals deemed essential to the nation’s energy and security requirements, and also released a new Strategic Materials List of commodities with plans to scope the creation of Strategic Critical Minerals Hubs around the country.   Bearing testimony to the material’s strategic and economic value, Copper made the Australian Government’s Strategic Materials list (along with nickel, aluminum, phosphorus, tin and zinc), a list that identifies commodities which, while not currently considered at risk of supply chain disruption, are essential for the energy transition and the Australian government “will continue supporting the extraction and processing of these minerals and monitoring their market developments.”

It remains to be seen whether the Australian developments will provide a further boost to U.S. domestic efforts to afford copper Critical Mineral status, but it is clear that with or without government action, the material’s star is not going to fade anytime soon.

Conclusion

Time may tell whether 2023 was in fact a watershed year in the critical minerals realm. It appears that we have indeed entered to Post-Petro Tech Age, and it was certainly a year in which tensions between two key global players – the U.S. and China – have reached new heights. Whether or not China overplays its hand in the long run is almost beside the point, as, in the short- to medium term its chokehold in the sector is strong, and we know that the country does not shy away from confrontation.   To not fall behind in the Tech War, decoupling the West’s critical mineral supply chains from China must be the name of the game.

As the West continues this quest, a wary realization appears to have emerged — that the need to coordinate Critical Mineral policy coexists with the growing awareness that even increased supply of essential metals and minerals may not keep pace with rising demand.

How the U.S. and its allies navigate this new resource relationship – multiplied across several score of Critical Minerals – may be one of the principal commercial, diplomatic and national security challenges of this century, and will be a guiding question for 2024.

The post ARPN’s Year in Review – 2023 appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Against the backdrop of China’s recently announced restrictions on graphite exports (see ARPN’s coverage here) set to take effect on Friday, the Washington Post zeroes in on China having opened a “next front in the Tech War” that is unfolding between Washington, D.C. and Beijing – Graphite (and clean energy).  Beginning this Friday, exporters of high-grade graphite will have to seek government approval and disclose details of their buyers, allowing Chinese authorities to pick and choose which applications to approve or deny based on national security grounds.

As Lily Kuo writes for the Post, Beijing has made clear that its latest salvo of critical mineral export restrictions is to be considered “payback for Washington’s efforts to curtail Chinese access to advanced American semiconductors,” and is merely “just the beginning.”   Thus were the words of China’s former commerce minister Wei Jianguo who warned earlier this summer, when Beijing announced the curtailment of gallium and germanium exports, that “China has many means and types of sanctions it can use,” adding that “if restrictions on our high-tech industry continue to escalate, China’s countermeasures will also escalate.”

Pointing to the fact that the U.S. Government has deemed all three minerals currently targeted by Beijing – graphite, gallium and germanium – critical minerals and the U.S. is import reliant for all three, with China accounting for the largest share of imports to date, Kuo says China’s tightening of the export control ratchet may be Beijing’s “most potent weapon to wield in its competition with Washington, one that could strike at the heart of American efforts to create green jobs while weaning the country off fossil fuels.”

As ARPN previously outlined, diversifying away from China represents a massive challenge. In the EV battery segment, China “is on track to retain over 85% of the global anode market share by the end of the decade,”according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence data.

The U.S. has taken several important steps to decouple critical mineral supply chains from China, especially those for battery materials and chip manufacturing in the last few years, ranging from DPA Title III designations and subsequent Department of Defense funding of projects to federal legislation providing funding for projects from the U.S. Department of Energy.

In the case of graphite, projects currently underway are expected to qualify for the IRA credits, and ultimately help “domesticate” the graphite supply chain, including Graphex’s pitch coating facility coming online in Michigan, and Graphite One Inc.’s effort to establish an all-American mine-to-manufacturing supply chain. Graphite One’s Graphite Creek deposit near Nome, Alaska was recently recognized by the U.S. Geological Survey as the largest U.S. graphite deposit and among the largest in the world, and, since July, the company has been selected for two Department of Defense grants, under the Defense Production Act’s Title III authorities and by the Defense Logistics Agency.

As tensions mount, rumblings over China blocking American access to rare earths are getting louder, with China’s Commerce Ministry issuing new rules requiring exporters to report details of their overseas shipments, and the People’s Daily running a piece stating, according to Kuo, “there was ‘no mystery’ about whether China would use its rare earths as a ‘counter weapon.’”

While Kuo says China’s exports controls could kill two birds with one stone by not only punishing the U.S., but also encouraging domestic companies to export finished products rather than raw materials, she argues that the strategy “is not without risks,” and has garnered criticism even within China, as it could – in the case of rare earths -  “weaken the international influence” of China’s REE industry as manufacturers could not only turn to other sources of supply, but move away from using rare earths entirely.

Tesla made headlines earlier this year saying it would cut REEs from its next-gen EVs, but Tesla is not the only automaker developing low- to zero rare earth content engines. Nissan is reported to pursue a dual strategy to develop both newer EESM (externally excited synchronous machine) motors, but also develop permanent magnet motors that will ultimately eliminate REE content.

Meanwhile, the Biden Administration has just announced a series of new actions to strengthen U.S. supply chains across the board.  One highly anticipated component is the Department of Defense’s release of a first ever National Defense Industrial Strategy (NDIS), which, according to the White House, “will guide engagement, policy development, and investment in the defense industrial base over the next three to five years.”

Whether or not China overplays its hand in the long run is almost beside the point, as, in the short- to medium term its chokehold in the sector is strong, and we know that the country does not shy away from confrontation.   To not fall behind in the Tech War, decoupling our critical mineral supply chains from China must be the name of the game.

As ARPN previously outlined,

“In the process, we will have to carefully balance domestic and global policy approaches — as well as public and private sector roles with economic and security concerns to reflect the geopolitical realities of our times.

And, as followers of ARPN well know, this can be best achieved within the context of a comprehensive all-of-the-above approach that focuses on domestic resource development where possible and leverages partnerships where needed.”

The post A New Note From the Front: Chinese Export Restrictions Underscore That to Win Tech War, U.S. Must Diversify Critical Mineral Supply Chains appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Our friends at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence have put together a new infographic illustrating China’s critical mineral supply dominance specifically for graphite anodes.

Before Beijing unleashed its latest salvo of export restrictions – this time for Rare Earths – graphite was the lastest material to find itself in the Tech War crosshairs with the announcement that to protect national security, China would require export permits for certain graphite products – a move analysts saw as a play “to control supplies of critical minerals in response to challenges over its global manufacturing dominance.”

As the largest component by volume and mass in EV batteries, graphite is considered a battery critical and has been deemed the “unsung player” in the battery supply chain. According to Benchmark data, Chinese production accounts for 74% of the total supply chain for graphite anodes, posing a risk for anode producers in South Korea and elsewhere.

Diversifying supply away from China represents a massive challenge as China “is on track to retain over 85% of the global anode market share by the end of the decade,” according to Benchmark analyst Tony Alderson.

For a full size look at the infographic, which clearly illustrates not only the scale of the graphite challenge, but also provides a window into technical and sustainability questions surrounding it, and for more detail on synthetic versus natural graphite, click here.

Over the course of the past few years, the U.S. has taken several important steps to decouple critical mineral supply chains from China, especially those for battery materials and chip manufacturing, ranging from DPA Title III designations and subsequent Department of Defense funding of projects to federal legislation providing funding for projects from the U.S. Department of Energy.

In the graphite realm, projects currently underway are expected to qualify for the IRA credits, and ultimately help “domesticate” the graphite supply chain, including Graphex’s pitch coating facility coming online in Michigan, and Graphite One Inc.’s effort to establish an all-American mine-to-manufacturing supply chain. Graphite One’s Graphite Creek deposit near Nome, Alaska was recently recognized by the U.S. Geological Survey as the largest U.S. graphite deposit and among the largest in the world, and, since July, the company has been selected for two Department of Defense grants, under the Defense Production Act’s Title III authorities and by the Defense Logistics Agency.

Positive moves in each case, but, as the infographic clearly demonstrates, more remains to be done – particularly in light of China’s obvious readiness to weaponize its dominance in the critical minerals realm.

The post China’s Critical Minerals Export Control Ratchet – Why it Matters: A Look at Graphite appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Now in the Tech War crosshairs:  Graphite.

According to Reuters, China announced today that to protect national security, it will require export permits for certain graphite products – a move analysts see as a play “to control supplies of critical minerals in response to challenges over its global manufacturing dominance.”

As the largest component by volume and mass in EV batteries, a fact of which many are not aware, graphite is considered a battery critical and has been deemed the “unsung player” in the battery supply chain. With China quite firmly dominating the supply chain for the material – not only is it the top global producer, but also accounts for more than 90% of graphite refining – ARPN has called the anode of the EV battery, which almost entirely consists of graphite, the “Achilles heel when it comes to building out a battery supply chain independent of China.”

As followers of ARPN well know, China is no stranger to playing politics with its critical minerals leverage, and ARPN has been tracking the weaponization of trade in the semiconductor segment in the context of the Tech Wars between the United States and China since 2020.

Earlier this summer, China placed export restrictions on gallium and germanium – key components of semiconductor, defense and solar technologies, a move that was considered a “show of force ahead of economic talks between two rivals that increasingly set trade rules to achieve technological dominance,” according to the Wall Street Journal.  The curbs on gallium and germanium, which have been in place since Aug. 1, have pushed up prices outside of China – a potential bellwether of what may be to come for the graphite market.

In 2020, ARPN’s Daniel McGroarty argued that whether or not the U.S. will act in time to secure reliable supply of the critical minerals needed for chip manufacturing and other hi-tech industries, is not “a question of science or engineering or who boasts the best single atomic layer deposition techniques.”  According to McGroarty, “it’s a question of political will.  And if the ultimate goal is to reshore American control over our economic destiny and national security, the answer is due right now.”

Three years later, the U.S. has taken several important steps to decouple critical mineral supply chains, especially those for battery materials and chip manufacturing, from China, ranging from DPA Title III designations and subsequent Department of Defense funding of projects to federal legislation providing funding for projects from the U.S. Department of Energy.

In the graphite realm, projects currently underway are expected to qualify for the IRA credits, and ultimately help “domesticate” the graphite supply chain, including Graphex’s pitch coating facility coming online in Michigan, and Graphite One Inc.’s effort to establish an all-American mine-to-manufacturing supply chain. Graphite One’s Graphite Creek deposit near Nome, Alaska was recently recognized by the U.S. Geological Survey as the largest U.S. graphite deposit and among the largest in the world, and, since July, the company has been selected for two Department of Defense grants, under the Defense Production Act’s Title III authorities and by the Defense Logistics Agency.

Positive moves in each case, but more remains to be done. As China ratchets up its export control regime – and more can be expected as geopolitical tensions continue to soar – U.S. stakeholders would be well-advised to kick their efforts to bolster U.S. critical mineral supply chains into high gear.   For China – a “country of concern” as per an August 9, 2023 Executive Order - it may be a short step from export controls to export embargoes.

The post Beijing Ratchets Up Export Controls – In the Crosshairs This Time: Graphite, the “Unsung Player” in the Battery Supply Chain appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Of course, the challenges of detangling supply chains and decoupling from China, which has long controlled various supply chain segments of many metals and minerals deemed critical are immense, and warrant a comprehensive all-of-the-above approach to mineral resource security.

Thankfully, the United States is home to vast mineral resources. Technological advances in the context of the materials science revolution allow the mining sector to efficiently and sustainably harness this often untapped potential – and as ARPN has reported, the U.S. Government has taken several important steps to support these important efforts.

A notable example of such efforts is the series of (Defense Production Act) DPA Presidential Determinations involving specific Critical Minerals, beginning with President Trump’s July 2019 designation of the Rare Earth permanent magnet supply chain as being “essential for the national defense,” followed by President Biden’s designation of what ARPN calls the “Battery Criticals” as DPA Title III eligible in March 2022, followed by Platinum and Palladium in a DPA Presidential Determination in June 2022.  Earlier this spring, two further Presidential Determinations (February 27, 2023 Presidential Determination, and DPA Presidential Determination (2023-5)), effectively created an entirely new category of critical minerals – “Defense Criticals” as ARPN calls them – by way of designating airbreathing engines, advanced avionics navigation and guidance systems, and hypersonic systems and their “constituent materials” as priority DPA materials.

Those DPA actions, funded by Congressional appropriations, are now producing Department of Defense funded projects to encourage domestic development of these “defense criticals” and their supply chains.

Idaho-based Perpetua Resources, whose Stibnite Gold Project in central Idaho is home to one of the largest reserves of antimony – a critical mineral for which the U.S. is currently more than 80% import reliant — finds itself at the front end of DPA-funded projects. According to estimates, the project could conceivably supply about 35% of U.S. antimony demand during the first six years of production.

Having been awarded two grants of $100,000 from the DoD’s Defense Logistics Agency to support efforts to evaluate whether antimony from stibnite can meet military specifications for use in munitions, Perpetua Resources later became the first recipient of a critical minerals award through the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Industrial Base Policy’s Defense Production Act (DPA) Investments Program, obtaining a $24.8 million grant to complete environmental and engineering studies necessary to obtain a Final Environmental Impact Statement, a Final Record of Decision, and other ancillary permits for its Stibnite-Gold.

With analysts reporting that Perpetua Resources is on track to successfully conclude the environmental impact statement process, earlier in August the company was further awarded a Technology Investment Agreement of $15.5M to develop a wholly domestic supply chain of antimony trisulfide of military-grade Stibnite ore.

While Perpetua Resources’ antimony project is at the front end of DPA-funded projects, others are also underway.

In June of this year,  the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Industrial Base Policy (OASD(IBP)), through its Manufacturing Capability Expansion and Investment Prioritization (MCEIP) office entered into an agreement with Jervois Mining USA, a subsidiary of Jervois Global Limited, to conduct feasibility studies to expand cobalt extraction in Idaho under Defense Production Act Title III authorities. A component of munitions and aerospace alloys, cobalt is also a battery critical used in high-capacity batteries for military and commercial electric vehicles.

One month later this summer, the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy, through its Manufacturing Capability Expansion and Investment Prioritization office awarded Graphite One, which seeks to advance its Graphite Creek project near Nome, Alaska to provide a fully integrated North American supply chain of the battery critical graphite, for which the U.S. is also currently 100% import dependent, a $37.5M grant under DPA Title III authorities to accelerate the feasibility study for the project.

While increased domestic production for critical minerals alone may not suffice to fully solve our nation’s critical mineral woes – hence ARPN’s support for an all-of-the-above approach to mineral resource security — there are promising domestic resource development projects that can go a long way to significantly reducing vulnerabilities in the short to medium term, and ARPN will continue tracking these DoD-funded projects as they begin to bear fruit.

The post Defense Production Act Key Vehicle to Reduce Supply Chain Vulnerabilities for Critical Minerals appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

However, as followers of ARPN well know, the challenges of detangling supply chains and decoupling from adversary nations, i.e. China, are immense, and warrant a comprehensive all-of-the-above approach to mineral resource security.

A recent policy event in Washington, DC has brought the focus back to an area that holds great promise for the U.S. as it seeks to re-shore its critical mineral supply chains: Alaska.

A two-day summit hosted las week by the Department of Energy Arctic Energy Office, the Wilson Center, Rand Corp. and the University of Alaska entitled “Critical Minerals in the Arctic: Forging the Path Forward” brought together state and federal policy leaders – including ARPN’s Dan McGroarty, who served as co-moderator of one of the non-public panels — to advance “policy recommendations for development of critical mineral resources in the Arctic, in the context of U.S. national security, energy, climate, and technology goals.” 

The event built upon an inaugural August 2022 conference entitled “Alaska’s Minerals: A Strategic National Imperative” hosted by the University of Alaska, U.S. Arctic Research Commission and the Wilson Center, which coincided with a USGS announcement that the state was slated to receive more than $6.75 million in funding for geologic mapping, airborne geophysical surveying, and geochemical sampling in support of critical mineral resource studies in the state.

The funding has merit.

As Brett Watson, assistant professor of applied and natural resource economics at the Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of Alaska, Anchorage, Steven Masterman, affiliate of University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and Erin Whitney, Director of the Arctic Energy office, U.S. Department of Energy wrote in a “read ahead document” for the event,

“Alaska’s complex geological history has led to formation of a wide array of mineral deposit types containing commodities many list as critical. Alaska either has, is, or could produce almost all of the commodities on the US Geological Survey’s 2022 list of critical minerals. Alaska is the largest producer of zinc in the nation, contains the nation’s largest graphite deposit, is the state with the only domestic tin resources and, has been a producer of critical minerals in times of national need, e.g. During WWII Alaska contributed tin, PGE’s, chrome, tungsten and antimony for the war effort. Most of the commodities produced to support the war effort have not been significantly produced since, and the resources remain in place, creating a ripe environment for meeting the nations need for these critical minerals.”

Keynoting the event’s second day, Alaskan U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski cited China’s recent decision to impose export restrictions on gallium and germanium as a real time example of critical minerals really being our nation’s “Achilles Heel.”   While acknowledging that progress has been made – Murkowski cited the U.S. government’s Critical Minerals List and key pieces of federal legislation such as her American Mineral Security Act, the bipartisan infrastructure package, some “gentle” permitting reforms of which we need more, the Inflation Reduction Act and the Defense Production Act of 2022 — but acknowledged that all of these steps are merely a beginning, and that more must be done.

Chiefly among the things that need to be done, according to Murkowski, are more mapping, more permitting reform, “opening more valves of federal support,” and “maybe learn[ing] on the fly when it comes to processing and refining.” Perhaps equally important, she said, was turning the tide of public opinion, which too often is “agnostic or downright hostile to mining.”

Murkowski cited the example of natural graphite, for which the United States has long been 100% import dependent as one of the promising opportunities Alaska holds for reducing our overreliance via the Graphite Creek deposit owned by Graphite One, Inc., which USGS has deemed the largest U.S. graphite deposit and among the largest in the world.  With Alaska home to many critical minerals, the Senator called on stakeholders and the policy community to engage in more dialogue and devise ways in which federal policy could support and strengthen projects like Graphite One’s, because the issue of critical mineral resource security is “too key to Alaska’s future, it’s too key to our country’s future.” 

Here’s hoping that stakeholders are listening.

The Wilson Center provides publications related to the conference, as well as complete video streaming on its website and on its YouTube channel, and will make proceedings from the tabletop exercise and briefs from the working sessions publicly available once finalized. 

The post Alaska Holds Key to Addressing Our Nation’s “Achilles Heel” – Conference Shifts Policy Community’s Focus on Critical Minerals in the Arctic appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

In the dozen years since then, graphene has become one of the stars of nanotechnology, hailed for its ability to conduct electricity and exhibit exceptional durability and strength, according to the National Science Foundation.

However as Simon Moores, founder and CEO of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence predicted on the ARPN blog a decade ago, “the road to wide scale commercialization and unlocking the true potential of graphene” has been “long and hazardous.”

The challenges notwithstanding, the materials science revolution has marched on, and today, the graphene space is bustling.  One of the pioneers in graphene development as an early recipient of federal funding via National Science Foundation Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants and U.S. Army SBIR contracts, Jessup, Maryland-based Vorbeck Materials Corp., currently holds more than 100 patents as its two primary graphene products, VOR-X and VOR-INK, find broad application in a variety of sectors and products.

And while it may well be a wonder material that can enhance innumerable applications ranging from “puncture-resistant footwear and wearable electronics to spray-on electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding for electronics and high-performance antennas,” as Shane Lasley writes for Metal Tech News, it is of course not “fairy dust.”

As ARPN has frequently outlined, you “need stuff to make stuff,” and graphene is derived from graphite – a critical mineral the market for which has long been dominated by China.

*** See some of our recent coverage of graphite’s supply challenges
and opportunities to alleviate them here and here.***

A just-announced partnership between Vorbeck Materials and Graphite One, Inc., owner of the Graphite Creek deposit near Nome, Alaska, recently recognized by the U.S. Geological Survey as the largest U.S. graphite deposit and among the largest in the world, could help change the narrative.

Vorbeck Materials is looking “to meet unique defense and commercial requirements with Graphite One’s high grade, US sourced graphite for advanced graphite and graphene applications.”  

At a time when geopolitical tensions are riding high, the partnership may represent an important piece of the puzzle as the U.S. and it Western allies continue step up their efforts to decouple from China.

The post Wonder Material Graphene — New Sourcing Partnership Could Further Goal of Decoupling From China appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

As Australia’s Financial Post reports, the Australian government has completed a mapping project of sites containing mine waste with reprocessing potential.

The “Atlas of Australian Mine Waste“ was launched this week by Geoscience Australia in partnership with RMIT University, the University of Queensland, as well as geological surveys across the country.

As Minister for Resources and Northern Australia Madeleine King stated, “[s]ome of the minerals we need now, and into the future, may not just be in the ground—they’re also in rock piles and tailings on mine sites around the country.”

She added:

“These minerals might not have been of interest when first extracted but could now be in hot demand as the world seeks to decarbonize—for example, cobalt in the tailings of old copper mines.”

Acknowledging the potential held by mine waste and tailings, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) earlier this spring solicited proposals for FY2023 grants to collect data on mine waste, using funds from Bipartisan Infrastructure Act in the context of the Earth Mapping Resources Initiative (Earth MRI).

Earth MRI provides more than $74 million in new mapping funding each year to “modernize our understanding of the Nation’s fundamental geologic framework and improve knowledge of domestic critical-mineral resources both still in the ground and in mine waste.”

As announced this May, more than $5.8 million will go towards mapping critical-mineral resources in Alaska in partnership with the Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys. Minerals included in the context of USGS and the Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical Survey research projects Alaska are: Arsenic, antimony, bismuth, cobalt, graphite, indium, platinum group metals, rare earth elements tantalum, tellurium and tin.

Miners have long realized the potential of reprocessing tailings, and have already “made a business out of reprocessing old mine waste to extract metal, as part of a mine remediation process,” as the Financial Post reports.  Many efforts have sprung up in recent years, and we’re featuring a few examples below:

In Australia, New Century Resources currently owns and runs the largest tailings retreatment operation at its zinc tailings retreatment operation in Queensland.

In the rare earths realm, Reuters lists six major projects outside of China aimed at extracting the critical minerals from waste or byproducts, including Iluka Resources Ltd’s and VHM Ltd’s operations in Australia, Rainbow Rare Earths Ltd’s endeavor in northeast South Africa, Swedish state-owned LKAB’s plans to extract REEs from two existing mines, and two U.S. operations:

Phoenix Tailings, a privately held U.S. company plans to launch operations using waste materials from a former iron ore mine in New York using its own processing technology.

U.S. Energy Fuels, originally focused on uranium production, started acquiring monazite, a byproduct of mineral sands, to extract REEs with plans to open its own separation plant by 2024.

Global miner Rio Tinto began producing tellurium at its Kennecott copper operation in Utah, where roughly 20 tons of the material are generated from by-product streams generated during the copper refining process. As America’s oldest copper mine, now in its 117^th year of operations, there’s no telling how many critical minerals may reside in Kennecott’s historic waste piles.

In addition to recovering tellurium from Kennecott, after commencing production of battery-grade lithium from waste rock at a lithium demonstration site at its Boron mine site in California in 2021, the company last fall began partnering with CR Minerals Co. LLC in an effort to extract a material called pozzolans from the facility’s tailings, which can be substituted for or combined with cement to decarbonization construction materials. Meanwhile, in Canada, the miner is producing scandium from titanium waste, becoming the first North American producer of scandium in the process.

As the materials science revolution marches on and continues to unlock new technologies allowing for the safe and commercially viable recovery of mine waste tailings, harnessing this – to date largely untapped — potential could play a significant role in a comprehensive “all-of-the-above” approach to bolstering critical mineral supply chains.

The post Turning the Same Stone Twice: Governments, Miners Turn to Mine Tailings to Bolster Critical Mineral Supply Chains appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.