Along with releasing a comprehensive Critical Minerals List, consisting of 30 metals and minerals considered critical for India’s clean technology goals, the country’s government announced its joining of the Mineral Security Partnership, a partnership between the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea and several other countries convened in June 2022 as an initiative to bolster supply chains while aiming “to ensure that critical minerals are produced, processed, and recycled in a manner that supports countries in realizing the full economic development potential of their mineral resources.”

Now, as reported by India’s news media, the country is considering an export ban on four key metals – lithium, beryllium, niobium, and tantalum.

According to government officials, the move is a strategic decision, aimed at ensuring the country’s self-sufficiency in crucial minerals for India’s national security and technological advancements.

The announcement comes within weeks of the Indian Parliament approving a Mines and Minerals bill allowing private exploration and mining for the first time for six minerals, including the four referenced above.

Export controls are gaining in popularity as the global race for resources heats up.

Earlier this summer, China announced export restrictions on gallium and germanium, followed by controls on certain drones and drone-related equipment.

Zimbabwe banned lithium ore exports last December, and Namibia recently banned the export of unprocessed lithium and other critical minerals.

All these announcement tie into a larger trend, which has been noticeable particularly in Latin America, a region with a historic penchant for nationalism, but also elsewhere.

ARPN has featured recent nationalist moves in Chile, Mexico and Bolivia, as well as in Myanmar, Indonesia, and China, and has showcased that even in the Western world, government involvement in the critical minerals sector is on the rise.

As such, announcements like the one made by India’s government should hardly come as a surprise, but they also serve as as another reminder, as we’ve stated elsewhere, that as the U.S. and the rest of the West continue the quest to decouple from China, we will have to carefully balance domestic and global policy approaches — as well as public and private sector roles with economic and security concerns to reflect the geopolitical realities of our times.

And, as followers of ARPN well know, this can be best achieved within the context of a comprehensive all-of-the-above approach that focuses on domestic resource development where possible and leverages partnerships where needed.

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This week, the Indian Ministry of Mines released a comprehensive Critical Minerals List, consisting of 30 metals and minerals deemed critical for India’s ambition for cleaner technologies in electronics, telecommunications, transport and defense, according to the government.

The list comprises the group of 17 rare earth elements (REEs) and six platinum group metals (PGMs) as complexes. It also encompasses four of what ARPN has dubbed the “battery criticals” lithium, cobalt, graphite and nickel (India’s list does not include manganese which rounds out the five battery criticals), as well as antimony, beryllium, bismuth, gallium, germanium, hafnium, indium, molybdenum, niobium, phosphorous, potash, rhenium, silicon, strontium, tantalum, tellurium, tin, titanium, tungsten, vanadium, zirconium, selenium, and cadmium.

Lastly, the list also includes copper, a mainstay metal and key component of the green energy transition which the United States has thus far failed to add to its own list of critical minerals in spite of numerous pushes for its addition.

According to Indian web news hub Rediff.com, the government plans to encourage public and private investment in exploration, mining and processing to secure the country’s critical mineral supply chains, and will seek to “facilitate the adoption of advanced technologies and international collaborations to enhance efficiency and environmental sustainability in the extraction and processing of critical minerals.”

One of the first such international collaborations was just made official during a state visit of India’s Prime Minister Narenda Modi to Washington, D.C. last week, where Modi and U.S. President Joe Biden announced the country’s joining of the Minerals Security Partnership alongside several bilateral and defense deals.

The MSP is a partnership between the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea and several other countries convened in June 2022 as an initiative to bolster supply chains while aiming “to ensure that critical minerals are produced, processed, and recycled in a manner that supports countries in realizing the full economic development potential of their mineral resources.”

As the rest of the world aims to decouple its critical mineral supply chains from China, which has long dominated most of the critical minerals sector across all links of the supply chain, India is looking to harness its geopolitical wealth to become a “global hub for critical mineral production and reinforce its position as a major player in the global economy.”

In keeping with that objective, India’s recent moves have global implications.

At the beginning of this year, a New York Times piece called on G20 leaders gathering in Davos, Switzerland, to “pivot to the new reality provoked by the Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the growth of extreme inequalities and aggressive Russian and Chinese autocracies.” 

In the critical mineral realm, these recent events served as a catalyst for a new “Great Game,” which the geopolitics of mineral resource supply had triggered and which gained momentum with the adoption of the Paris agreement in 2015.

India’s recent critical mineral moves are highly relevant in the context of this new “Great Game,” particularly as relations between India and China are strained by an ongoing border conflict and growing regional rivalry, both of which are shaping South Asia’s security landscape and strategic environment.

With India having overtaken China as the world’s most populous country and set to become the third-largest economy in the coming years, India’s recent moves could be seen as a direct challenge by Beijing.

As Frédéric Grere and Manisha Reuter outline for the European Council on Foreign Relations, “New Delhi still exerts a dominant role in South Asia and, specifically, the Indian Ocean, but as China consolidates its position in the region, its attitude towards India has become more assertive. India remains resolute about preventing Chinese hegemony in Asia, repeatedly stressing that a multipolar world starts with a multipolar Asia, and seeking partnerships with a variety of countries, including the US and the EU. Beijing is concerned about India’s growing military ties with the US and tends to consider India’s intentions through the lens of its own rivalry with the US.”

The new Great Game may have just gotten Greater.

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They argue that the coronavirus pandemic has accelerated deployment of these applications earlier than anticipated. That, coupled with the fact that “50 per cent of the world’s GDP and half of global CO2 emissions now covered by a net-zero commitment” with close to 115 countries having pledged carbon neutrality by 2050, will have fundamental ramifications for geopolitics — the “scramble for natural resources to drive its energy requirements.”

They point to a study by the UK’s major oil company, BP, which indicates that after more than 150 years of near-uninterrupted growth demand for oil may have already peaked and now “faces an unprecedented decades-long decline.”

The massive momentum for the energy transition will, they say, “along with the need to attain technology supremacy, increase countries’ dependence on materials necessary for the technological marvels of tomorrow,” and will ultimately have us see global geopolitics “shift from oil producing countries to the rare earth and other critical mineral producing countries in the coming years.”

Such are the consequences of the world having entered the “Tech Metals Age,” as ARPN’s Daniel McGroarty phrased it in 2019. It’s a brave new world, and adjusting to the new realities and thriving in them will warrant a rethink — and a fast one at that. We may be leaving the Petro Age, but we can take a page from its playbook.

As McGroarty told members of Congress during a virtual forum on critical minerals held earlier this month:

“(…) if we entered the Tech Metals Age, we’re not lost without a map in this new world. We can take a page from the successful effort to reverse decades of dependency on foreign oil: The secret to achieving American energy independence? An ‘all of the above’ strategy that didn’t pit one form of energy against another, but embraced oil and natural gas and coal and wind and solar and hydro, biofuels and nuclear power. The common denominator: Energy produced in the U.S., by American companies and American workers, with American ingenuity and American investment.”

That “all of the above” approach should extend both to resource production and processing, as well as policy, a view that was reinforced by the latest IEA report on a pathway to carbon neutrality by 2050.

Here’s hoping that the Biden Administration — after taking several positive steps in the direction of “all of the above” — acknowledges that in a post-Petro Tech Metals Age, there is no room for simplistic “not in my backyard,” or “keep it all in the ground” mantras.

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Case in point:  India, which although rich in mineral resources, relies to a significant extent on Chinese imports to meet domestic needs.  As the New Delhi-based Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) recently outlined, India is one of the few countries that is home to vast REE reserves, but is ranked low in the REE market and considered more of a “low-cost supplier of raw materials.”

The fact that most of REES consumed in India are imported from China, deprives the country of an “opportunity to earn substantial revenues as a supplier of hi-tech equipment like neodymium magnets” – particularly because the country is lacking a downstream sector, i.e. the manufacturing of intermediate products. “[i]nterestingly Japan currently imports dysprosium from India, using it to manufacture advanced neodymium magnets which are of high value, and today controls a sizeable portion of the global neodymium magnets market.”

Realizing the urgency of the situation, the Indian government, albeit late to the race, has taken first steps to strengthen its critical minerals outlook, and earlier this summer released a new National Mineral Policy aimed at increasing the production of major minerals by 200 percent in 7 years. 

Home to about 6.9 million metric tons of REEs – which amounts to roughly one-fifth of global reserves — companies have begun exploring REE opportunities domestically.

More must be done, however, says IDSA: 

“While a beginning has been made with the announcement of a National Mineral Policy 2019, covering non-fuel and non-coal minerals, India must strive to acquire expertise in valorising these minerals and shift to developing its downstream sector.”

 As co-founder of Technology Metals Research Jack Lifton suggested earlier this year, India could well become an alternative supplier of REEs to the world as it “has large reserves of monazite and is unexplored for other rare-earth minerals. (…) What’s missing is a domestic downstream processing supply chain. If this is constructed, India will become a major producer.” 

“To that end,” concludes the IDSA analysis,  “India should seek to leverage its ties with Japan and other countries that have the requisite technology for manufacturing downstream equipment so that it can set itself up as an alternative source of the REE-based technology, with its own supply chain of minerals and metals required for the same, instead of being content with being a mere supplier of upstream materials.”

As the U.S. continues to forge partnership agreements with allied nations such as Australia and Canada to secure its critical mineral supply chains, expect other nations like India to do the same.  The scramble for the world’s mineral resources has only just begun.  

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The latest one of these deals, struck by the Nipponese Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation’s (JOGMEC) in late October with local Kazakh authorities to jointly explore for rare earths in the Karaganda and Kostanay regions, solidifies Japan’s foothold in the resource-rich Central Asian nation.

Policy makers in the U.S. – which is no stranger to import dependencies for critical mineral resources – should take note.  Commodity prices may have cooled in recent years, and manufacturers are increasingly looking to substitution and recycling, but these are no silver bullets to alleviate supply shortages, particularly as demand for tech minerals will likely continue to soar.

Meanwhile, the global resource wars are continuing to heat up before our very own eyes.   Japan may have learned its lesson the hard way, when China cut off its REE exports to Japan in 2010. It is now approaching its mineral supply issues strategically, with a long-term vision in mind, and is not only looking to Kazakhstan, but has also signed a partnership agreement with India to explore stakes in deep-sea mining.

Whether or not we may one day see OPEC-style coordination between China, Russia and Kazakhstan on global REE supply, as some fear, the United States, would be well-advised to join Japan in formulating a long-term critical mineral resource strategy – the stakes are too high, and the nature of mining and challenges associated with it are just not conducive to improvising policies on the fly.

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According to recent media reports, Chinese companies have made forays into Sri Lanka looking for copper, zinc and aluminium suppliers. While this search was unsuccessful, Sri Lanka, as a nation with “ports and airports with quick connections to the Indian subcontinent and other areas” is still relevant as a logistics base for China in its quest for resources.

South America is also seeing increased Chinese resource-seeking activity with China’s state-owned Minmetals having submitted a first-round offer for the Las Bambas copper mine in Peru, a US $5.9 billion operation run by Glencore-Xstrata.

Meanwhile, China’s aggressive pursuit of its minerals agenda in West Africa, where the People’s Republic has seized many mineral resource acquisition opportunities, has prompted India, which is also looking to secure access to critical minerals outside its own borders, to shift focus towards East Africa.

With the global race for resources in full swing, and no signs of China’s appetite for metals and minerals abating, placing an emphasis on formulating a critical minerals strategy for the U.S. should be a key priority for policy makers. With vast mineral riches beneath our own soil we not only have an opportunity to provide our domestic manufacturers, who find themselves exposed to supply vulnerabilities, stable access to (not all, but many) critical metals and minerals – we have an obligation to do so.

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Mills predicts that:

“[a]ccessing a sustainable, and secure, supply of raw materials is going to become the number one priority for all countries. Increasingly we are going to see countries ensuring their own industries have first rights of access to internally produced commodities and they will look for such privileged access from other countries.”

He concludes:

“The supply of most commodities is going to tighten. This undeniable fact should be on everyone’s radar screen. Is it on yours? If not, it should be.”

Thankfully, there are signs that the issue is increasingly appearing on Washington DC policymakers’ radar screens – let’s hope momentum keeps building for a the formulation of a comprehensive U.S. mineral strategy in light of the many challenges we’re facing in this area.

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In the wake of mounting tensions between Japan and China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, India, which had previously agreed to supply Japan with Rare Earths, has sought to intensify cooperation with Japan in this field. As Metal Miner reports, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is expected to ink an agreement kicking off joint REE exploration in India during a forthcoming trip to Tokyo later this year.

Says MetalMiner contributor Sohrab Darabshaw:

“India is trying its best now to ensure that China’s loss, at least on Japan’s front, will be its gain. Also, what is fuelling India’s interests is that an alignment over REE could well mean putting up a formidable geo-strategic wall to halt increasing Chinese assertiveness in the region on other fronts like territory and trade and commerce.”

While the geopolitical dimension of securing supplies of critical metals and minerals is not lost on the above-referenced players, the realization that resource policy does not occur in a vacuum has yet to sink in in Washington, D.C.. Hopefully, once the dust from this Presidential election cycle settles, U.S. policy makers will realize that it’s time to formulate a comprehensive mineral resource strategy.

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With more than 6,500 delegates expected at this year’s Indaba, next month’s event in Cape Town is set to be the biggest conference yet.  Particularly interesting from an American Resources perspective is the fact that organizers report a significant increase in interest from resource-hungry China and India, not just in terms of attendance, but active participation.

The conference is known to be a place where many mining deals have been struck in the past.  Against that background, the fact that China and India, both of which have worked feverishly to increase their footprint in Africa in an effort to gain access to the continent’s vast mineral riches, are looking to step up participation in the event is a clear indication that the global race for resources shows no signs of slowing down.

Another interesting take-away from the article points in the same direction:  Given the success of the conference in Africa, there are now plans to hold a similar Indaba in Asia this fall.  With awareness of the need to ensure future access to critical mineral resources increasing around the world, will policy makers in Washington, D.C. finally give the issue the attention it deserves?

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While resource consumption in India has been on the rise, the paper laments that “performance has been poor both in input and output parameters compared to best practice mining economies like the US, Canada, Australia, China, Brazil and South Africa.” It recommends an expansion of the country’s resource base, and specifically calls for the exploration and development of minerals like bauxite, iron ore, lead and zinc.

The announcement of the targeted GDP increase comes against the backdrop of efforts to remove bureaucratic obstacles for the mining sector, as well as plans to ramp up research and development, and to set up a stakeholder network as part of a new national resource strategy.  Arguably a latecomer in the global race for resources, India is serious about correcting past mistakes – a mindset one would hope to also find in Washington, DC, where a comprehensive critical mineral strategy has yet to be devised.

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