Search Results

As we have outlined, last month’s executive order on critical minerals could have far-reaching implications for our national security and economic wellbeing.  If you needed a case in point – look no further than Lithium.

One of the hottest commodities of the day, Lithium, as ARPN expert panel member and managing director of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, Simon Moores recently outlined, “is coming of age in a big way. It’s the core ingredient to 99 percent of electric vehicles and as a result, demand is going through the roof.”

Meanwhile, China has long been jockeying for pole position in the EV industry segment, and is “outpacing the U.S. and other countries in a global race to secure supplies of [Lithium - ] an all-important element for electric cars.”

In global terms, Moores’s company sees a 10-fold increase in the industry’s demand profile over a ten-year timeframe.  Currently, Lithium supplies are largely sourced from Chile, Argentina and Australia, and processed into battery grade material in China and the U.S.

Against the backdrop of surging demand, a few months ago, professor emeritus of mining engineering at the University of Nevada, Jaak Daemen, lamented that the reason the U.S. was unprepared to meet demand was not a lack of resources, but rather “a regulatory approach that endlessly delays bringing mines in production.”

The executive order may help change that.

Nevada is one of the states with known Lithium reserves. As the Las Vegas Sun recently outlined, “[b]uoyed by Nevada’s enormous potential reserve of lithium and the opening of Tesla’s Gigafactory nearly 200 miles to the north, 25 mining companies and investor-backed speculators have staked more than 13,000 placer claims, covering almost the entirety of the Clayton Valley and 18 hydrographic basins.”

Meanwhile, much of these companies’ activities in the state are still exploratory, and as Jim Faulds, geologist and director of the Bureau of Mines and Geology at the University of Nevada in Reno has pointed out, “Lithium has not been studied in much detail in Nevada to really understand how much might be out there.” 

As a direct consequence of the executive order, Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke has already signed a secretarial order directing initial steps to producing the first nationwide geological and topographical survey of the U.S. in modern history, and in doing so marking a first step towards “really understanding how much might be out there” – not just Lithium and not just in Nevada, but materials across the critical minerals spectrum and across the United States. Coupled with other reforms outlined by the executive order, including permitting reform which has hampered domestic mineral resource development for too long, this survey may help yield a comprehensive federal action plan that can significantly reduce our over-reliance on foreign mineral resources.

While it is unlikely that the U.S. will become self-sufficient for its Lithium needs, there is no good reason why we should not harness our domestic resource potential to the fullest extent possible, and in doing so make the U.S. stronger, more competitive, and safer.

If you’re one of nearly half of all Americans, you will have already made a few New Year’s resolutions for 2018.   Among the most popular are personal betterment goals like “losing weight,” and “exercising more.”  While we’re all for making personal resolutions, at ARPN, we’re more concerned with the goals our policy makers are setting for themselves this year.

After several months that presented us with a number of individual initiatives that represented progress in the mineral resource policy realm, yet still lacked an overarching strategic focus, we ended 2017 on a high note:

On December 19, USGS released its Professional Paper 1802 – the first update in 44 years — entitled “Critical Minerals of the United States” which discusses 23 mineral commodities USGS deems critical to the United States’ national security and economic wellbeing.  Only a day later, a new Executive Order called for Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to publish within 60 days a list of critical minerals to be followed by a strategy to reduce our nation’s reliance on critical minerals, among other things.

These early Christmas presents are setting the stage for real reform in mineral resource policy in 2018. However, for meaningful change to take hold, there are a few suggested resolutions all stakeholders – and not just department heads in charge of formulating a mineral resource strategy – should consider making:

Have a national policy conversation 

• National security, manufacturing, jobs and the economy, alternative energy and technology development:  Policy discussions on all of these priorities are a constant of American political life – yet the minerals and metals that are key to all of these issues receive scant attention.  That’s got to change in 2018.  While agency and department heads are in charge of rolling out a critical minerals strategy, what is needed in the coming months is a broad national conversation about our nation’s mineral needs and our over-reliance on foreign sources of supply, involving a broad variety of stakeholders from both the private and public sectors.

Read!

• The USGS’s “Critical Minerals of the United States” report – which weighs in at a hefty 852 pages – is a must-read document for all stakeholders involved to develop an understanding of U.S. mineral resource needs and sources of supply, and should form the basis for any meaningful policy discussions in 2018.  ARPN knows how the Congress works; let’s hope Members delegate a key staffer or several to divvy up the USGS tome and really get familiar with it.
• Furthermore, there are a few other studies to be released in the early months of the year, among them the USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries and Behre Dolbear’s survey of mining jurisdictions called “Where to Invest.”
• For good measure, we’d also like to invite everyone again to read our two policy reports “Reviewing Risk: Critical Metals and National Security” and “Through the Gateway: Gateway Metals and the Foundations of American Technology.”  In terms of sheer page-count, this is the place to start:  Think of them as the Spark Notes of critical minerals strategy.

Zero in on the Gateway Metal/Co-Product Interrelationship

• This one is wonky, but necessary.  Of the 23 minerals deemed “critical” by USGS several are materials ARPN has frequently discussed as part of our informational campaign to highlight the importance of “Co-Product Metals and Minerals” –  i.e. materials that are generally not mined as stand-alone metals but are mostly “unlocked” in the refining process of their “Gateway Metals.”  Harnessing the interrelationship between Gateway Metals – which include mainstay metals like Copper, Aluminum, Nickel, Tin and Zinc  – and their Co-Products, many of which are increasingly becoming the building blocks of 21st Century technology, should be a focal point of any critical mineral resource strategy.  And while ARPN celebrates the USGS “list of 23,” we have to note that of the 5 Gateway metals, only one – tin – appears on the list, even though the other four – copper, zinc, aluminum and nickel – are “gateways” to more than a half-dozen minerals that do make the USGS list.
• Ready to learn more?  Aside from our Gateway Metals report, follow this link to Thomas Graedel et al.’s effort to illuminate this issue in their 2015 study entitled “By-product metals are technologically essential but have problematic supply” 

Enact legislation

• As we previously noted, “as important as Executive Orders are, they are not legislation, and history has shown that policy that is set and enacted by the stroke of the Presidential pen can just as easily be undone. Ultimately, for any real progress to grab hold and develop staying power, codification of any reforms yielded by these orders through Congressional action is highly desirable.” 

So, our three resolutions come down to:  Discuss, Read – and Act.  Let’s look back at 2018 as the year a new and comprehensive critical minerals strategy helped make the U.S. stronger and safer.

There’s more to be considered, but if policy makers and other stakeholders start with these resolutions, they’ll be well-positioned to “develop a comprehensive federal action plan to encourage domestic resource production, through mining, recycling and reclamation.”

Only one day after USGS released its new report “Critical Minerals of the United States” – a study which underscores the United States’ over-reliance on foreign minerals – a new executive order directs Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to publish within 60 days a list of critical minerals to be followed by a report (after another [...]

Too much family? Too much rockin’ around the Christmas tree? If you’re looking to get away from the hustle and bustle of the holidays and sit down with a good book, look no further – USGS has you covered. The agency has just released a new study entitled “Critical Minerals of the United States“ which [...]

Amidst the chaos of Christmas shopping, holiday parties and travel arrangements, the end of the year is customarily the time to take stock of the last twelve months and assess where to go from here. Here is our recap of 2017: On the heels of a year that very much presented itself as a mixed [...]

During yesterday’s oversight hearing on the subject of “Examining Consequences of America’s Growing Dependence on Foreign Minerals,” before the House Natural Resources Committee, panelists raised some of the key issues we have consistently highlighted on our blog. Panelists included: Mr. Ronnie Favors, Administrator, U.S. Defense Logistics Agency, Strategic Materials, U.S. Department of Defense Dr. Murray [...]

As part of our latest feature series “Materials Science Profiles of Progress,” in the context of which we highlight positive steps towards the development of the comprehensive mineral resource strategy our country is so sorely lacking, we’re zeroing in on a promising public private partnership that recently celebrated its first birthday. In October of last [...]

A few years ago, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) made a splash when it took unprecedented early action in an effort to derail the development of one of the largest domestic deposits of key strategic mineral resources (Copper, Molybdenum, Gold, Silver and Rhenium) – the so-called Pebble Deposit in Southwestern Alaska.  In spite of the fact [...]

For the last few months, politics has sucked up much of the oxygen in Washington, DC and around the country.  With the inauguration of the 45th President of the United States behind us, many of us are hopeful that the time has come to finally shift the focus away from politics toward policy. Against the backdrop [...]

Over the course of the last few weeks, we reviewed Nickel and its co-products Cobalt, Palladium, Rhodium and Scandium as part of our trip “Through the Gateway.” We’ve established that the importance of each of the co-products is growing as the revolution in materials science advances. Meanwhile, our import dependence for each of the co-products is [...]