critical minerals

“Why is the United States reliant on China and Russia for strategic minerals when we have more of these valuable resources than both these nations combined?”

Stephen Moore, senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and an economic consultant with Freedom Works, and ARPN expert panel member Ned Mamula, a geoscientist and adjunct scholar at the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute, argue it has nothing to do with “geological impediments.” In a new op-ed for The Washington Times, they say: “[i]t is all politics.”

Citing the latest USGS numbers, Moore and Mamula zero in on our nation’s mineral resource dependencies and retrace the root causes for our over-reliance on foreign metals and minerals.  Acknowledging some of the positive developments that have taken place in recent weeks, including the presidential Executive Order to calling for a federal strategy to ensure secure and reliable supplies of critical minerals, Moore and Mamula call for a change in strategy and philosophy in mineral resource policy:

“We need a change in strategy and philosophy when it comes to mining. For federal land development, the 20th-century philosophy of ‘lock up and preserve’ needs to be replaced with an ethic of ‘use and explore.’ We have hundreds of years of these resources with existing technology. 

China’s leaders have been known to boast that the Middle East has the oil and China has the rare earth minerals. But that’s false. We do. With a pro-mining policy, we can make America a mineral-exporting superpower, not an importer reliant on our adversaries. This strategy has worked like a charm when it comes to energy; it should be employed to yield the same America First results for strategic minerals.”

Click here for the full piece.

To read more from ARPN expert panel member Ned Mamula on current mineral resource policy issues, click here.

It may not be brand new, but this video serves as a good reminder of  why the long overdue mineral resource policy reform debate now underway is so critical.

Last Friday, pursuant to December’s Executive Order 13817, Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke released his draft list of “35 Minerals Deemed Critical to U.S National Security and the Economy,”  kicking off a month-long comment period.

While we value the list as a critical first step in the right direction, we have to note that of the five Gateway Metals only two – Aluminum and Tin – appear on the draft list, even though the other three (Copper Zinc and Nickel) are “Gateways” to more than a half-dozen minerals that do make the list.

As we’ve previously pointed out, harnessing the interrelationship between Gateway Metals and their Co-Products, many of which are increasingly becoming the building blocks of 21st Century technology, should be a focal point of any to-be-formulated critical mineral resource strategy.

We are encouraged by the fact that, while stopping short of including Copper, Nickel and Zinc, the draft list specifically acknowledges the co-dependency between Gateway Metals and their Co-Products.

Citing Copper as a key example, witnesses during a Congressional Hearing on Congressman Mark Amodei’s H.R. 520, the National Strategic and Critical Minerals Production Act, also stressed the important interrelationship between Gateway Metals and the tech metals they “unlock.” 

Here’s hoping that this important theme will be expanded upon in the coming weeks – and ultimately find its way into our nation’s comprehensive federal action plan to encourage domestic resource production, through mining, recycling and reclamation.

Without much fanfare, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) released its annual Mineral Commodity Summaries report at the end of January. Followers of ARPN will know that we usually await the release of said study with somewhat bated breath. However, this year was slightly different, as the context in which to embed this year’s report [...]

Last month, the American Geosciences Institute ran a webinar entitled “Tracking the Global Supply of Critical Materials.”  Speakers for the event, which discussed “efforts to gather information and develop tools that can be used to ensure a secure national and global supply of mineral resources, and identify and quantifying vulnerabilities in this supply, among others,” [...]

The following is a guest post by ARPN expert panel member Chris Berry, Founder, House Mountain Partners. His expertise focuses on, but is not limited to, energy metals including Lithium, Cobalt, Graphite, Vanadium and Rare Earths. The Executive Order recently signed by President Trump to prioritize domestic natural resource development couldn’t have come at a [...]

A new year, a new installment of our Materials Science Profiles of Progress series: The Critical Materials Institute (CMI), a U.S. Department of Energy Innovation Hub under the auspices of Ames Laboratory has announced a new collaboration entered into by one of its industry associates to recover Rare Earth Elements (REEs) from electronic waste.  Momentum [...]

We have barely taken down the Christmas decorations, but stores have their Valentine’s Day merchandise out, and we’re already halfway through January.  It may feel that way, but it’s really not to early to highlight an event coming up in June – Summer will be here before we know it. So mark your calendars, ladies [...]

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 [...]

Mark your calendars – the American Geosciences Institute (AGI) will host a timely webinar on critical mineral issues later this month. The webinar entitled “Tracking the Global Supply of Critical Materials” will be held on Friday, January 26, 2018, at 11:00am EST, and will “focus on U.S. and European Union (EU) efforts to gather information [...]

Amidst the latest political drama, bomb cyclones and button size comparisons which are dominating the news cycle, you may have missed two great pieces of analysis by member of the ARPN panel of experts Jeff Green, president and founder of Washington, DC-based J.A. Green & Company – so we are highlighting them for you: In [...]