mining

We’ve said it before, EV battery technology is the new black – and if the metals and minerals fueling this technology are not yet on your radar, you’ve clearly missed the memo.  Even the oil industry is coming to grips with this new reality. As our friends from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence report:

“For the first time ever, the oil industry has acknowledged lithium and electric vehicle battery raw materials via BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy 2018.”

Says Simon Moores, managing director of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence and member of the ARPN panel of experts:

 “While the subject of lithium has been on the radar of Big Oil in recent years, this is the first-time lithium has been publicly acknowledged by the oil industry. We have entered a new era for commodities.”   

While the United States was the the largest Lithium producer in the world in the 1970s, today, for a number of reasons, U.S. production lags far behind that of Chile, Australia, and several other nations, according to USGS.

The ongoing EV revolution, in which China has long jockeyed for pole position, is driving automakers to look for ways to decrease their reliance on China for their Lithium needs, and in doing so, they are increasingly turning back to the United States as a potential source of supply. As Reuters reports:

“The United States produced only about 2 percent of the world’s lithium last year, from a single mine in Nevada. But it has around 13 percent of the world’s identified resources, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Higher prices could make mining profitable. In May, the United States counted lithium among 35 critical minerals, which could up speed up mine permitting.”

Reuters cites a U.S. automaker the spokesperson of which, on condition of anonymity, said that “given its close proximity and the opportunity to diversify the supply chain, we would certainly be interested in U.S.-based lithium sources – as long as it is sustainable, environmentally friendly, and competitively priced.”

Just this past week, following the completion of a pre-feasibility study, a promising resource estimate was released for Nevada-based project.  While challenges will remain, as “some of the deposits will require as-yet untested technology for extraction,” experts, including our friends at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, believe that at least one or two U.S.-based projects could enter production in the next four to five years.

Much will depend on the domestic policy environment, where changes are on the horizon. If U.S. policy-makers and other stakeholders make good on their recently-found commitment to comprehensive resource policy reform, the United States could once more become the mineral resource power house it once was – and Lithium could be on the forefront of this development.

“For want of a nail … the kingdom was lost”

Invoking the old proverb dating back to the 13th Century as a cautionary tale and reminder that “the most sophisticated defense supply chain is only as strong as our weakest link,” ARPN’s Dan McGroarty argues in a new piece for Investor’s Business Daily that the time to make the connection between critical minerals and national defense is now.

Against the backdrop of the House of Representatives having added comprehensive critical minerals reform language to the 2019 fiscal year National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), McGroarty makes the case that while opponents may suggest otherwise, there may in fact be no better vehicle for the provisions, because “ensuring that the U.S. does all it can to ensure the reliable domestic supply of defense-critical metals and minerals is about as germane to the NDAA as it gets.”

McGroarty cites the recently finalized DOI list of 35 minerals deemed critical to national security as Exhibit A in the argument to attach the critical minerals provisions to the NDAA:

- “16 of the 35 Critical Minerals appear in a non-classified defense study as ‘hav[ing] already caused some kind of significant weapon system production delay  for DoD.’
- For 22 of the 35 listed minerals, China is either the leading global producer, leading U.S. supplier – or both.

Connect the dots, and it’s clear the U.S. lacks reliable access to a wide range of metals and minerals critical to our military’s advanced weapons platforms — materials that in nearly two-dozen cases, we are sourcing from China, a nation that the 2017 U.S. National Defense Strategy identifies as presenting a ‘central challenge to U.S. prosperity and security.’

That’s a five alarm fire bell when it comes to strengthening the raw materials supply chain in the U.S. Defense Industrial Base, and it’s all the reason Congress needs to include critical minerals language in the National Defense Authorization Act.”

Click here to read the full piece.

Earlier this month, the Congressional Western Caucus led a coalition of Members of Congress and Stakeholders to call on EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to reverse a pre-emptive veto of the Pebble Mine project in Alaska. The veto stopped the project before it had formally applied to begin the permitting process — a unilateral expansion of [...]

Earlier this month, members of the Congressional Western Caucus sent a letter to Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, and Acting Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) Mary Neumayr calling for the inclusion of additional metals and minerals into the draft critical minerals list released by Secretary Zinke [...]

Advances in materials science are altering and expanding the ways in which we use metals and minerals at neck-breaking speeds, and are drastically changing the supply and demand picture.  The United States was significantly less dependent on foreign supplies of metals and minerals in the 1970s — but today, we find ourselves import-reliant for scores [...]

Against the backdrop of an increased focus on critical minerals at the federal level, North of 60 Mining News — an Alaska-based trade publication covering mineral resource issues for Alaska, northern British Columbia, Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut — has started a new series of articles ARPN followers may wish to bookmark. As Lasley pointed [...]

Since its inception, ARPN has advocated for more robust domestic resource development. The U.S. mine permitting process has long inhibited domestic development, and has exacerbated U.S. dependence on foreign metals and mineral supplies.  As the pace of technological change accelerates, driven by advances in materials science, these ever-deepening resource dependencies are weakening the U.S. economy [...]

“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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]