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With global pressures on supply chains continuing to mount, the United States and allied countries announced the formation of a new initiative to bolster critical mineral supplies during last month’s Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada convention.

The Minerals Security Partnership (MSP) comprises the United States, Canada, Australia, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the European Commission, and seeks to “ensure 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.”

With demand for critical minerals underpinning the green energy transition and other key 21st century tech sectors forecast to skyrocket, the MSP will “help catalyze investment from governments and the private sector for strategic opportunities —across the full value chain —that adhere to the highest environmental, social, and governance standards.”

Similar cooperative announcements have been made in the past, but the MSP, in the words of Reuters’s Andy Home, may signify a “tectonic realignment with far-reaching implications” as it — against the backdrop of Russia’s war on Ukraine and mounting tension with China — is “defined as much as anything by who is not on the invite list — China and Russia.”

Explains Home:

“China’s dominance of key enabling minerals such as lithium and rare earths is the single biggest reason why Western countries are looking to build their own supply chains.

Russia, a major producer of nickel, aluminium and platinum group metals, is now also a highly problematic trading partner as its war in Ukraine that the Kremlin calls a ‘special military operation’ grinds on.

A previously highly globalised minerals supply network looks set to split into politically polarised spheres of influence.”

In essence, according to Home, “a metallic NATO is starting to take shape, though no-one is calling it that just yet.”

With the era of globalized trade patterns in strategic commodities over, as Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister Christian Freeland has phrased it, “friend-shoring” may well become “the big economic and geopolitical issue” going forward, and may end up topping our “word of the year” list for 2022.

However, as we have frequently argued — most recently in our latest post — friend-shoring alone is not a panacea. It will not obviate domestic production and processing, as some would have you believe. It is a crucial piece of the puzzle, but the only viable path to success in the long run lies in a comprehensive “all-of-the-above” policy approach from mine to manufacturing which encompasses fostering cooperation with allies and scaling up research and development while at the same time building out domestic production and processing capabilities along with recycling and closed-loop technology.

As critical mineral supply chain challenges deepen against the backdrop of a global pandemic, Russia’s war on Ukraine, and rising resource nationalism in the Southern Hemisphere, U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm sounded the alarm during the beginning of the Sydney Energy Forum, an event co-hosted by the Australian Government and the International Energy Agency, with the support of the Business Council of Australia as a Forum partner.

Kicking off talks with Australian resources minister Madeleine King and mining executives from 14 mining companies, Granholm expressed concern that the Biden Administration’s goal to get to net zero carbon, a goal which, as followers of ARPN well know hinges on critical mineral resource development, could be subject to manipulation or even weaponization in the current geopolitical context.

Said Granholm:

“It is no secret that the United States does want to get to net zero. We can’t get there without much of the critical minerals and rare earths that you are extracting.

We have a goal in the United States of being able to do some of this but –in fact, the President has put forward $5 billion for development of processing for particularly battery supply chains. However, as those of you who have been doing processing know, it takes a while to be able to set that up. And we need additional processing capacity throughout the world.

Our concern is that critical minerals could be as subject, or vulnerable, to manipulation as we’ve seen in other areas, or weaponisation. And we want to – I think it’s healthy and from a national security perspective for both of our nations – to diversify our supply chains and make sure that these minerals are available to get to the ultimate goal of net-zero.”

After years of neglect, it is good to see that the issue of strengthening and diversifying supply chains away from adversary nations like China is finally being awarded the attention it deserves in government circles. The Biden Administration is well-advised in partnering with friendly nations like Australia and Canada in its efforts to shore up reliable and sustainable supplies of the metals and minerals underpinning 21st Century technology and the green energy transition. However, as we have previously stated, cooperation with allies must be embedded into a broad-based all-of-the-above context across the entire value chain:

“‘Friend-shoring’” is certainly an important pillar of the “all-of-the-above” concept, but, in light of mounting demand and ever higher stakes with Russia’s war on Ukraine and rising resource nationalism, it is insufficient to alleviate our overall problem.
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The good news is that courtesy of the materials science revolution, industry can harness new technologies to do expand our mining infrastructure responsibly and sustainably – (…) and as Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm acknowledged [last] summer during a U.S. Senate hearing: ‘This is the United States. We can mine in a responsible way. And many places are doing it. And there are some places where there are more challenges, but we can do this.’”

Geopolitical tensions, Russia’s war on Ukraine, rising resource nationalism in the Southern hemisphere – against the backdrop of ever-increasing stakes it appears that a new theater in the global resource wars has opened up: Cyber warfare, and more specifically, according to Defense One, “weaponized NIMBYism.” The U.S. Department of Defense has announced that it is investigating a recently-unearthed disinformation [...]

It’s that time of the year again.   We’re gearing up to celebrate the men and women who have fought for, and continue to safeguard our freedoms.  It may not feel like it when the cost for the average July 4th cookout has drastically increased, but we have much to be thankful for, particularly at a time when geopolitical [...]

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 [...]

It’s a brave new world. Rising geopolitical tensions in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and increasing resource nationalism in the Southern hemisphere and booming material demand to power the accelerating global push towards net zero carbon are warranting a rethink on the part of policy stakeholders not just in the United States, but [...]

In yet another indication that increasing demand and supply chain challenges in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and war in Ukraine have raised the geopolitical stakes, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken explicitly referenced critical minerals and the United over-reliance on China both in terms of mining and processing in a speech outlining U.S. policy [...]

In a recent piece for The Hill, Adina Renee Adler, deputy executive director of Silverado Policy Accelerator, a Washington, D.C.-area based think tank, calls for the increased harnessing of circular economy concepts in service to U.S. critical mineral resource policy. Acknowledging bipartisan efforts to strengthen U.S. critical mineral supply chains in the past year, for which [...]

Acknowledging the vast material inputs required to power the EV revolution in the context of the push towards net zero carbon — as well as the significant supply chain challenges associated with the sought-after shift — the Biden Administration has announced a $3.1 billion funding program for U.S. companies producing and recycling lithium-ion batteries. According to Secretary [...]