“Instead of export restrictions resulting from politics or trade disputes, it now seems that the novel coronavirus pneumonia (NCP) outbreak could leave the U.S. and the rest of the world with an REE shortage.”

The spread of the virus, which originated in Wuhan, capital of the Chinese province of Hubei, earlier this year, has indeed had – in the words of analyst Jack Lifton, a “foreseeable but unintended consequence.” 

As Lasley outlines, an increasingly limited workforce and slowed transportation as truck drivers refuse to enter areas of concern and travel is restricted have prompted reports that China’s rare earth sector has slowed “to a crawl” and is currently “running at about 20 percent capacity.” This has prompted industry experts to warn that “dwindling REE stockpiles could result in supply chain disruptions both within the country and globally,” if the“sector does not get back up and running soon.”

To ARPN Principal Daniel McGroarty, whom Lasley quotes throughout his piece, this prospect is hardly surprising.  He says:

“It’s not necessary to predict how severe the coronavirus will be or how long it will last, to see even at this early point that, in our interconnected global economy, near single-source reliance for a critical material is a vulnerability.”

…All of which underscores the need for the United States to diversify its sources of mineral resource supplies — for rare earths and beyond. 

Concludes McGroarty:

“Saying an event is a ‘black swan,’ beyond anyone’s power to predict, is no excuse for failing to develop more diverse supply. (…) Just as world health organizations are laser-focused on developing an anti-virus vaccine, we’ve got to take steps to ensure the U.S. economy builds up its immunity to global shocks that can destroy growth and GDP – and a key part of that is avoiding extreme dependencies on any one country for critical minerals.”

Steps taken over the past few months point in the right direction, and have resulted in U.S. domestic production of“critical rare-earth mineral concentrates [having] increased by 8,000 metric tons (over 44%) in 2019 to 26,000 metric tons, making the U.S. the largest producer of rare-earth mineral concentrates outside of China,”according to USGS.

However, it is important to note that all of the U.S.-produced rare earths concentrate was exported to China for separation into individual rare earth elements, since that portion of the supply chain doesn’t exist in the United States.

Here’s hoping that policy makers well beyond the public health sector see the coronavirus as a the wake-up call that it is.

The post Coronavirus Underscores Perils of Resource Dependence – A Look at Rare Earths appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

REEs are key components of a wide range of high-tech products across all walks of life – ranging from consumer electronics over industrial over wind turbines to electric vehicles and guided missiles. Meanwhile, the U.S. is nearly 100 percent import-reliant on REEs, a market almost exclusively cornered by the Chinese.

ARPN and members of the ARPN panel of experts have long pointed out the dangers of this over-reliance. In the words of Jeff A. Green, “[w] have gifted China robust trade leverage should they chose to use it.” Pointing to a 2010 example of China’s previous politicking with this leverage he continued:

“China could easily cripple American supply chains and significantly limit our ability to produce advanced radar and weapon systems by limiting or disrupting the supply of any one of these minerals. Allowing a non-allied foreign nation to control such a broad swathe of critical minerals is a significant security threat to the U.S. and its warfighters.”

Introduced by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.V.), and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the “Rare Earth Element Advanced Coal Technologies Act (REEACT),”seeks to change that. It aims to provide federal funds for projects — run under the auspices of the Department of Energy — to develop domestic technology for REE extraction from coal and coal byproducts in order to re-establish a U.S. domestic supply chain.

According to the press release issued by Sen. Murkowski’s office, “[t]he National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) began studying the potential of extracting rare earth elements from coal and coal byproducts in 2010, and expanded its REE research efforts in 2014. In 2016, NETL’s Rare Earth Elements (REE) from Coal and Coal Byproducts RD&D Program awarded two grants to West Virginia University for researchers to evaluate the potential use of REEs from coal byproducts in the region. In July 2018, West Virginia University, in collaboration with NETL, opened a pilot scale rare earth extraction facility to continue its research towards commercialization. REEACT authorizes an annual appropriation of $23,000,000 per year to the Department of Energy through 2027.”

Says Sen. Capito:

“Rare earth elements are essential to our economy and national security, but the United States is currently dependent on foreign suppliers—particularly China—for this valuable resource. “As it turns out, rare earth elements can be extracted from coal and its byproducts, including fly ash and acid mine drainage, and extracting these materials provides a financial incentive for cleaning up legacy mine sites. This legislation would help support the research and development of these technologies, a win-win-win for Appalachia’s economy, the environment, and our national defense.”

The bill ties into the broader effort to strengthen the United States’ mineral and economic security, in the context of which Sen. Murkowski is expected to “introduce standalone legislation aimed at streamlining the permitting process for lithium and other mines, bolstering state and federal studies of domestic supplies of critical minerals and encouraging mineral recycling, among other topics,” according to government sources.

Of course, ARPN will be keeping tabs on all these efforts, so check back for updates in the coming weeks and months.

The post U.S. Senators Introduce Legislation in Push to Re-Establish U.S. Domestic REE Supply Chain appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Followers of ARPN will find many familiar themes in Mamula’s and Bridges’s book, but as the National Mining Association has pointed out, “[w]hile others have told important parts of the story, Mamula and Bridges have woven together myriad threads to give us the startling implications of our failed minerals policies.”

As Paul Driessen, senior fellow with the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, who also authored the foreword for the book, recently wrote in a preview piece for the Canada Free Press:

“[The book provides] reasons why we must reexamine the policies that brought us to this untenable and unsustainable point in American history. In concise, plain language, geologist Ned Mamula and Silicon Valley expert Ann Bridges explain why we must literally break ground in these areas… and drill down to find out what minerals are in them. Their key points must be pondered, absorbed and acted on by all who care about our security and prosperity.”

Groundbreaking! is offered in print and eBook formats wherever books are sold.

The post Hot Off the Press: “Groundbreaking” Reading Material – ARPN Expert Co-Authors Book Sounding Alarm on Over-Reliance on Foreign Minerals appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

“It’s the Monday after Thanksgiving, and we’re all feeling the same thing today: “It’s been Saturday for about 3 days and thus I am not prepared for Monday.”

The NYT’s first tip is to start small.  A S&P Global Market Intelligence piece from earlier this fall that showed up in our Twitter feed via our friends at the National Mining Association allows us to do just that – it offers a good overview of the mineral resource issues we’re facing today, and reminds us why we need to continue to push for a comprehensive U.S. critical minerals strategy.

The piece traces our growing over-reliance on foreign metals and minerals and contrasts domestic developments that have contributed to our current challenges with actions taken by China, arguably one of our greatest rivals, and at the same time lead supplier for many metals and minerals the U.S. has to import.

Followers of ARPN will find familiar themes here. Citing Joe Balash, assistant secretary for land and minerals management at the Interior Department, the authors state that “the path leading to America’s reliance on other countries for mined materials has been complicated and systemic.” While Balash argues that decades of policies reducing the availability of public lands were a major contributing factor, the National Mining Association points to lengthy permitting times for mining projects and a lack of “common-sense policy” to make “best use” of the United States’ mineral riches.

Outlining the national security challenges that come with our over-reliance on foreign mineral resources, the piece closes with a quote from Greg Gregory, president of Matrion subsidiary Materion Natural Resources, who says what is warranted is a “‘whole-of-government approach’ across department and agency lines to ensure the security of supply of critical minerals and address concerns about mining on public lands and long permitting delays.”

Says Gregory:

The post Post-Thanksgiving Rut? Back to Basics on Resource Policy Issues appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Followers of ARPN are well aware that, as Mamula and Moore argue,

“Mineral imports have steadily increased for at least the past two decades because draconian permitting requirements and environmental opposition have made it hard to supply those needs from sources within the U.S. Now there is not enough domestic mining to meet robust manufacturing demand.

However, the real problem is that more and more mineral imports are coming from China, Russia, and third-world dictatorships.”

Against this backdrop, the recent executive order “to ensure secure and reliable supplies of critical minerals for the nation” and the subsequent release of a draft list of 35 metals and minerals critical to U.S. national security is a welcome development.

The piece includes an interesting chart that combines the draft list with one of ARPN’s favorite charts – the 2018 iteration of USGS’s page six of its annual Mineral Commodity Summaries report.

Mamula and Moore place much of the blame for our ever-increasing import dependency on misguided environmental overreach. They write:

“The problem is definitely not a shortage of domestic mineral sources. In fact, the U.S. is well endowed with mineral resources, according to numerous reports by the USGS. The nation was much more mineral self-sufficient in the 1990s, when it led the world in mining output. Since then, however, the U.S. has lost much of its capacity to mine, refine, smelt, or process critical minerals and metals because of a broad anti-mining agenda among many of the more militant environmental groups.  

Ironically and unfortunately, ‘greens’ oppose many mineral-resource policies that would actually facilitate environmentally beneficial outcomes, such as renewable energy.” 

In spite of the vastness of mineral riches beneath U.S. soil, they argue, “poor federal stewardship policies that restrict exploration in areas of known mineral deposits” have led to “dangerous” mineral resource dependencies.

Mamula and Moore see the executive order and resulting policies as an opportunity for a “huge turnaround for reducing dangerous mineral imports through responsible mining:”

“This EO commits the country to reducing its vulnerability from mineral-import overreliance while paving the way for a cleaner and safer planet through existing and new technologies used by America’s mining industry. Increased domestic mining of abundant mineral resources is absolutely necessary for the economic health of our nation and is a long overdue America First strategy.”

Click here for the full piece.

Also, read Daniel McGroarty’s public comments on the DOI draft list here.

The post Mamula & Moore: Current Federal Policy Efforts Opportunity for “Huge Turnaround for Reducing Dangerous Mineral Imports Through Responsible Mining” appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

With access to these tech metals being contingent on the availability of their respective Gateway Metal(s), the geopolitical dimension of resource policy becomes all the more important.   Not too long ago, a USGS analysis painted a troubling picture, showing that across the board, our reliance on foreign non-fuel minerals has significantly increased over the examined 60-year time frame.

We decided to zero in import dependence percentages specifically for our Gateway Metals, using the last 25 years of data provided by USGS in its Mineral Commodity Summaries.  A look at the trend line for our first Gateway Metal, Copper, which provides us with access to Rhenium, Molybdenum, Selenium and Tellurium confirms that the United States’ degree of import dependence for Copper has grown drastically since the end of the Cold War:

                                                                                        Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries

This needn’t be.  As we have previously pointed out, with our own reserves and at mining projects ready to come online, the U.S. would not only be able to become self-sufficient with regards to meeting Copper needs, but could even position itself to be a Copper net exporter.  In the process, the U.S. would also provide our domestic manufacturers with stable access to its co-products, which are some of the key tech metals we’ve come to rely upon to drive 21^st Century innovation.

We will review our nation’s import dependence numbers for some of the other Gateway Metals in separate posts, but a look at Copper alone makes clear that it is time for a new, more comprehensive approach to mineral resource policy.

The post A Look at Gateway Metal Import Dependence: Copper – 25 Years of Rising Dependence appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

 Via our friend Simon Moores, managing director of Benchmark Minerals and lead expert on the supply chain for batteries, we came across a solid analysis of minerals in clean car technology.  Bloomberg’s Liam Denning discusses the role of lithium as one of the key minerals at the heart of 21^st Century battery technology fueling electric vehicles as well as portable devices and power storage.

Contrasting lithium’s story with that of two other once promising metals, palladium and uranium, Denning outlines lithium’s rise to stardom, appeal and potential staying power.  His verdict – lithium is a mineral worth watching:

“Rising demand that is largely indifferent to price, combined with lagging supply, is what commodity bulls dream of. This underpinned the boom in palladium, as well as the recent bull markets in oil and copper. It looks like lithium’s turn is coming.”

With Tesla’s new Gigafactory slated to open soon, and other battery makers expanding their plants, chances are, he is right.

Says Simon Moores:

“[New supply from all lithium sources] will have a critical role to play in sourcing lithium for the battery supply chain. As things stands, there will not be enough lithium to supply the battery megafactories coming onstream.”

With the net import reliance on foreign supplies of lithium hovering at more than 60% according to USGS estimates, this challenge will most certainly affect U.S. battery makers and downstream domestic industries.

Click here to read the full piece.

Click here to keep tabs on Simon Moore’s analysis of critical metals and minerals.

The post Is Lithium the New Black? appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

While kids on the East Coast saw their wish for snow more than fulfilled, the release of the United States Geological Survey’s annual Mineral Commodity Summaries report this week was certainly less sensational.   A quick glimpse at the summary and one of the key charts reveals that aside from a now three-toned cover page, not too much has changed over last year.

Not surprisingly, with the global commodities market slumping, the estimated value of total non-fuel mineral production in the U.S. decreased by 3% from that of 2014. Meanwhile, in terms of foreign resource dependence, which is something on which ARPN has kept tabs with the report, the number of minerals for which the U.S. is 100% import reliant has remained constant at 19.

However, it is context and perspective that matters, and in that sense, another USGS study that is perhaps even more instructive than this year’s Mineral Commodity Summaries has gone largely unnoticed.   As the recently-released “Comparison of U.S. net import reliance for nonfuel mineral commodities—A 60-year retrospective” shows, 30 years ago, the U.S. was 100% foreign-dependent for 11 metals and minerals.  Today, that number has increased to 19. Meanwhile, we are more than 50% import-dependent for 47 minerals in all – nearly half of the naturally-occurring elements on the Periodic Table.

As our very own Daniel McGroarty has argued in recent testimony before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, “(…) the risks are real – with implications for the strength of the American economic recovery, for the revival of U.S. manufacturing might, and for the hoped-for dominance of U.S. ingenuity and enterprise in the advanced technology applications that we know are shaping the world of the 21s Century.” 

The current trend towards reduced exploration spending and increased time required for the mining permitting process is already sending production of key metals and minerals overseas.  Manufacturing tends to follow and set up where the metals are.

McGroarty’s conclusion:

“I don’t think there’s another nation in the world that can match American ingenuity.  We can pioneer the ideas behind wind and solar and so much else – but where will the materials that make these new energy sources real – where will they come from?

How we answer that question will determine to a large extent whether the U.S. can regain its manufacturing might…  Whether America will lead the alternative energy revolution…  And whether the U.S. will have the metals and minerals we need to provide the modern military technology we depend on.”  

As children in Washington, DC, are finally returning to school after the historic snowfall, and Congress is back to business, one would hope that our policy makers have used their snow days to carefully review the challenges outlined by the latest USGS reports.

The post U.S. Mineral Resource Dependency Continues to Spell Trouble appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Analyzing data collected from 1954 through 2014 for more than 90 non-fuel mineral commodities from more than 180 countries, the study, entitled “Comparison of U.S. net import reliance for nonfuel mineral commodities—A 60-year retrospective,” confirms what ARPN readers know and underscores the findings of our 2012 report “Reviewing Risk: Critical Metals & National Security”: The United States’ reliance on foreign non-fuel minerals has significantly increased over the examined 60-year time frame, both in terms of number and type, as well as percentage of import reliance.  Along with the rise in import dependency came a drastic shift in provider countries.

The authors explain the relevance of their findings:

“Mineral commodities are the fundamental building blocks of civilization. Along with energy, they form an essential foundation upon which modern economies and living standards rest. The changing patterns in net import reliance of nonfuel mineral commodities over the past 60 years are a clear indication that the United States has become increasingly dependent on other countries to supply nonfuel mineral commodities that are important for its economic well-being and national security.

When determining mineral criticality, defining supply risk, and developing mitigation strategies, it is crucial to understand for which commodities a country is experiencing an increase in the [percentage of net import reliance] (NIR%) and to know the amount of the increase, as well as to be aware of shifts in commodity sources and supply chains.

Furthermore, it is important to understand and measure the types, sources, and quantities of commodities imported by the United States compared with what can be competitively produced domestically.” 

The data clearly shows that whereas the number of nonfuel mineral commodities for which the United States was greater than 50% net import-dependent was 28 in 1954, this number has increased to 47 in 2014.  And while the U.S. was 100% net import reliant for 8 of the non-fuel commodities analyzed in 1954, this total import reliance increased to 11 non-fuel minerals in 1984, and surged to 19 in 2014.

These numbers alone paint a troublesome picture, but adding the supplier countries into the mix adds fuel to the fire: Whereas in 1954 the U.S. sourced metals and minerals largely from our trading partners, our diversified supply sources today also include a number of countries that are ranked as “unfree” and “less free” on various indices, thus raising the specter of supply disruptions given the volatility of geopolitical realities.

Considering that much of our over-reliance on foreign minerals is largely self-inflicted, making the exploration and development of the vast mineral deposits we are fortunate to have beneath our own soil should be a key priority in Washington.  Hopefully, our policy makers and their staff can make time to take a break from politics to review USGS’s findings.

The post USGS Rings Alarm Bell: United States’ Mineral Resource Dependencies Have Increased Drastically appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

With war raging in Europe, Time Magazine was reporting on U.S. demand for manganese, which was critical to steel manufacture.  Time noted that the U.S., at the time, was producing just 10 percent of its annual need from domestic mines – most of it as a by-product from a copper mine in Montana.

In 1941, our biggest foreign manganese supplier was Russia, providing 25 percent.  But Time observed that Nazi forces had just taken over a key mining region in Ukraine, interrupting Russian supply.  Fortunately – especially so few weeks from the Pearl Harbor attack – the U.S. had hoarded two years’ worth of manganese in the National Defense Stockpile.

Fast forward to present day:  America currently produces 0 percent of its annual Manganese usage. The last U.S. manganese mine stopped operating in 1970 – importing 100 percent, with our leading suppliers being South Africa, Gabon, and China.  Our U.S. stockpile has a “negative balance” (some sort of government accounting legerdemain seems at work here.  Let’s hope we don’t “owe” the U.S. stockpile some of the manganese we’re already not producing).

Hopefully, there’s not another Pearl Harbor on the horizon.  But then, that’s what we thought the day that Time Magazine hit the newsstands on October 13, 1941.

The post Strategic Metals Flashback – or Flash Forward? appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.