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Just as a new federal law – the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 – may send a much-needed investment signal to the underdeveloped critical mineral supply chains for EVs and other 21st  century technologies, many of which are rife with underinvestment, political risk and poor governance – lawmakers and policy experts gathered for a two-day two-day conference hosted by the University of Alaska Fairbanks, in partnership with the Wilson Center and U.S. Arctic Research Commission earlier this week.

Entitled “Alaska’s Minerals: A Strategic National Imperative,” the summit addressed ways in which Alaska’s vast critical mineral potential, which ARPN has frequently pointed to, could be harnessed to diversify America’s critical mineral supply chains.

U.S. Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan kicked off the proceedings, arguing that Alaska has many of the metals and minerals deemed critical by the U.S. government, while stressing the need for federal permitting changes for Alaska to be able to supply the materials underpinning the sought-after green energy transition.   Said Sen. Murkowski:

“We have the resources. We have resources other states clearly don’t have….  What we need is the ability to be able to access those resources in a way that allows us to be competitive.”

Senator Sullivan looked back to an earlier Critical Minerals summit in Alaska in 2012 – Sullivan was at that time Alaska’s Commissioner of the Department of Natural Resources – and cited our ARPN Risk Assessment, a sober reminder that while momentum is building in 2022, it has been a long journey bringing critical minerals into the public consciousness and public policy debate.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy, keynoting the event on Tuesday, echoed this sentiment his remarks while highlighting specific projects in the state that could play a vital role in “securing our national security and economic growth by providing the critical minerals needed for the energy transition that we see is well underway.”

While welcoming President Joe Biden’s invocation of the Defense Production Act to spur domestic development of the “battery criticals” – lithium, cobalt, graphite, nickel and manganese — the governor lamented the Administration’s lack of acknowledgement of Alaska as a potential source of critical minerals for securing U.S. supply chains, along with an earlier Administration decision to suspend a previously granted federal right-of-way for a prominent Alaskan mining project.

Governor Dunleavy added:

“This administration must speak with one voice. It wants critical minerals, or it doesn’t. It wants the lower energy prices, or it doesn’t.  It wants to create jobs in the U.S. or it doesn’t.  It wants to protect the environment or it doesn’t. It cares about human rights, or it doesn’t. (…) The disjointed federal permitting process doesn’t just hurt Alaskans (…), it hurts every industry, and every state. (…) 

If we set ambitious goals for EVs or renewables without permitting the production of critical minerals here, those minerals will still be produced, they just won’t be produced in here in America or Alaska, they’ll be produced by child labor, potentially, they’ll be produced without environmental standards, potentially, they’ll be produced at the expense of the American worker, to the benefit, potentially, of our adversaries.”  

Sen. Murkowski suggested that the federal government take steps to foster “predictability” in the mining sector to unleash the state’s mineral potential, arguing that “other countries” would “in place longer-term policies that allow them to focus on what it means to be sticking with a policy, and a view, and a vision towards dominance.”

ARPN’s Daniel McGroarty, speaking on Monday, also offered his thoughts on the current critical minerals policy discourse.

As a coda to the conference, on the same day the sessions wrapped up, the U.S. Geological Service announced that Alaska will 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.

Here’s hoping this is another signal that more positive change is on the way — because, as Senator Sullivan’s reference to our 2012 ARPN Risk Report made clear, while progress has been made, much more remains to be done, and the rest of the world will not wait for us.

For a webcast of Day Two of the event, click here.  (We will update this post once Day One video coverage, which will include McGroarty’s remarks, becomes available as well.)

In a new piece for Canada’s Globe and Mail, Niall Mcgee discusses China’s quiet but systematic campaign to corner the critical minerals segment in Canada and stakeholder reactions in Ottawa, or more precisely, the lack thereof.

Citing the 2019 acquisition of the Tanco Mine in Manitoba, known as one of the world’s few sources of cesium as well as highest-grade lithium, by the Chinese Sinomine Resource Group, which earlier this year began shipping lithium produced at Tanco back to China to feed the country’s expansive EV industry, Mcgee laments that there has been little reaction from Ottawa:

“Although Ottawa has made clear that it does not want to be beholden to a hostile foreign power for critical minerals such as lithium, so far there has been little in the way of action from the federal government to prevent that from happening.”

Mcgee cites mining investor and activist shareholder Peter Clausi, who goes as far as calling the Canadian federal government, which could have initiated a review of the acquisition on national security grounds, “morons” for failing to do so:

“It’s [i.e. the Tanco Mine is] known for having the world’s highest grade lithium. The grade is so high that nobody had the technology to process it. And the morons let it go,” Clausi said.

As ARPN outlined in our discussion of the approval of the sale of Canadian lithium developer Neo Lithium Corp to Chinese state-owned Zijin Mining Group Ltd., in the process of which the Canadian government decided not to review the takeover on national security grounds:

“Foreign takeovers of Canadian companies are subject to an initial security screening by the government.  If the initial screening concludes that the takeover constituted a threat to Canada’s national security, it would trigger a more formal review under Section 25.3 of the Investment Canada Act, and the deal could be blocked.”

In the case of Neo Lithium’s project – the 3Q Mine – the Canadian Government argued that “Canada was unlikely to benefit from lithium produced from Neo’s project, because it was located far away, in Argentina.” However, the project could have played an important role in supplying Canada’s lithium needs at a time when the country is not extracting the material within its own borders.

The same could be said for the Tanco deposit.  As Mcgee elaborates, similar scenarios unfold for other metals and minerals:

“Canada has similar also-ran status when it comes to cobalt. This country produces only small amounts of the vital battery metal input, while China controls about 70 per cent of the market. China is even more dominant in graphite, with an 80-per-cent lock on the market. 

And while Canada is a major miner of nickel, another battery metal, it has no refineries that can process it for the battery industry.”

He cites Jeffrey Kucharski, adjunct professor at Royal Roads University and former assistant deputy minister of Alberta’s Department of Energy, who asked during parliamentary proceedings on the Neo Lithium deal:

“How can Canada build a lithium supply chain, or any other critical mineral for that matter, when it allows the assets of Canadian companies to be acquired by a country that seeks to cement its dominance in this sector?” 

As ARPN previously outlined,

“the development ties into the broader North American context of the United States and Canada having formalized a joint action plan on critical minerals in 2020 which included commitments by both governments to strengthen North American battery material supply chains against the backdrop of China’s ever-tightening grip on global supplies.

A stronger focus on critical mineral resource security through the prism of national security is certainly warranted, not just for our Canadian friends, but also from a U.S. perspective.

As Tsvetana Paraskova notes in a piece for Oilprice.com, ‘while the Administration was reviewing supply chain issues and vulnerabilities to its demand for critical minerals, China is moving in on Africa and South America to strike alliances and lend money to mineral resource-rich African countries, while Russia is thought to be providing shadow ‘security services’ in some African nations with a mercenary organization with links to the Kremlin.’

 Followers of ARPN know all too well that as the green energy transition accelerates, we will be facing significant critical mineral resource shortfalls.  For the United States (and for our close allies), the time to act is now. As Paraskova concludes, ‘(…) otherwise, America’s clean energy goals and hi-tech and automotive supply chains could depend on China.’

The energy provisions in the just passed Inflation Reduction Act, coupled with a prior invocation of the Defense Production Act for the “Battery Criticals” – lithium, cobalt, graphite, nickel and manganese — are indications that the urgency of the situation has begun to resonate with U.S. policymakers.

Of course, as we cautioned in our latest piece on the Inflation Reduction Act, “any new law this wide-ranging will require federal guidance on the way to implementation – and spark follow-on efforts by resource development opponents to roll-back some elements even as resource development proponents look to build on this new legislative initiative.”

However, there is good reason to hope that “the bill’s requirements will help jumpstart a more comprehensive push towards domestic sourcing and processing, onshoring, friend-shoring, and harnessing the materials science revolution,” all of which would represent a “critically important leap forward to build the secure, responsible industrial base our economy and national security needs,” in the words of General John Adams, U.S. Army brigadier general (ret.).

As pressures continue to mount, U.S. stakeholders are beginning to realize the urgency of building supply chains “that are safer, more secure and not beholden to a country that has multiple human rights violations, predatory lending practices, and vast national security complications.”  For now, however, too often, automakers still have to turn to Chinese suppliers to meet [...]

In a new piece for RealClearEnergy, John Adams, U.S. Army brigadier general (ret.), argues that the newly proposed Inflation Reduction Act, negotiated by Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) is not only the most ambitious climate bill in U.S. history, but also represents an opportunity to bolster our nation’s economic and national security.  General [...]

Already burdened with increasingly volatile supply chains in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, rising geopolitical tension and Russia’s war on Ukraine, automakers’ drive towards net zero emissions is facing an additional challenge as environmental, social and governance pressures on the industry increase. The latest case in point concerns one of the new materials on [...]

The mainstream media and parts of the political establishment may just now have begun to realize it — but followers of ARPN have long known that our nation’s critical mineral woes are real, and go beyond the often discussed battery criticals (lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, and manganese) and include one of the key mainstay metals: [...]

As the U.S. House of Representatives has passed its version of the FY 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), another piece of legislation enacted earlier is beginning to bear fruit in the context of strengthening our nation’s critical mineral supply chains. Earlier this summer, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced it had set aside [...]

As U.S. policy makers and other stakeholders scramble to secure supply chains to meet rising demand for battery criticals against the backdrop of a pandemic, geopolitical tensions and war, as well as rising resource nationalism in the Southern hemisphere, a newly enacted law threatens to make President Biden’s already ambitious push to require that 50 percent of [...]

Underscoring the growing awareness that our nation’s overreliance on foreign supplies of critical minerals underpinning 21st century technology stretches beyond the much-discussed Rare Earths and battery criticals lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, and manganese, the U.S. House Committee on Armed Services has released draft legislation to address China’s stranglehold on the supply chain for antimony. Used [...]

While critical mineral resource policy is finally receiving the attention it deserves against the backdrop of increasing supply chain challenges, a look at the materials stealing the spotlight would have you believe the list of metals and minerals deemed critical from a U.S. national and economic security perspective is much shorter than it is. The [...]