permitting

As we outlined in our last post, the Biden Administration’s strategy to secure critical mineral supply chains, as outlined in its just-released 100 Day Supply Chain Report, embraces an “all of the above approach.” While strengthening sustainable mining and processing domestically, the Administration will also rely on partnerships with our closest allies — and of those, most notably, Canada.

In that context, a region that, in spite of its storied mining history — does the Klondike gold rush ring a bell? — and its vast mineral potential has rarely made headlines in the U.S. may come into focus going forward: The Yukon.

Writes Yukon economist Keith Halliday in an opinion piece for Yukon News:

“Yukoners have long been fortunate to live in a geopolitical backwater. The Yukon generally doesn’t make it into the President’s Daily Brief. If you run into a foreign correspondent with a sat-phone in Whitehorse, it’s because they’re going canoeing with friends on the Snake. (…)

But could we actually benefit from today’s rising tensions, as China’s ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy prompts democratic countries to look for strategically secure sources of raw materials? After the recent G7 summit, where leaders discussed a more unified China strategy, both the Biden Administration and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen talked about the role Canadian resources could play.

(…)

There is the possibility that the Yukon could benefit from the desire among Canada’s allies to find secure sources of strategic minerals.”

Indeed, the region’s mineral potential is vast, to the point that it made the top 10 of the Fraser Institute’s list of most attractive mining jurisdictions as recent as 2018.

Halliday argues that the fact that Europe and the United States are looking to diversify their mineral resource supply chains away from China amidst growing geopolitical tensions “is good news for Yukon mining projects whose ores are on US and European lists.”

“However,” as he notes, “that list does not include some of the most commonly mined minerals in the Yukon, such as copper or gold.”

While it is true that Copper did not make the U.S. Government’s official list of critical minerals in 2018, the Biden Administration’s 100 Day Report acknowledges Copper as an integral component of Lithium-ion battery technology, both in the context of being what we have called a “gateway metal” to other critical materials, and for its “use across many end-use applications aside from lithium-ion cells, including building construction, electrical and electronic products, transportation equipment, consumer and general products, and industrial machinery and equipment.”

With that, the Yukon’s appeal may be on the rise.

As perhaps it should be, given geopolitical developments this week that put five Chinese companies operating in Xinjiang Province on the U.S. Government’s sanctions list for using forced labor at the province’s quartz mines to produce polysilicon for the solar power sector. With Yukon’s many quartz deposits, the territory may draw attention from companies in the solar sector seeking a new source of polysilicon, produced under Canada’s exacting environmental, health and safety standards.

Whatever metals or minerals may come to define a new tech metals Yukon “gold” rush, Halliday cautions, though: “We should also remember that there are still many other countries who will be happy to host mining projects if Yukon properties get tied up in extensive permitting and approval processes.”

And permitting is an area that has seen the territory drop in the Fraser Institute rankings in recent years, with the latest report citing a mining company executive as stating “Permitting approval processes in the Yukon are a major concern for investors.”

Concludes Halliday:

“If we don’t ensure our mining approval processes allow high-quality, environmentally-sound projects to be permitted in a timely way, we will end up missing out on both the economic benefits of strategic mining as well as the opportunity to help our allies secure their mineral supplies.”

Suffice it to say, ARPN will add the Yukon to our watch list for critical mineral resource developments (pun intended). You should, too.

On Tuesday, December 10 — close to the two-year anniversary of the White House’s executive order “to develop a federal strategy to ensure secure and reliable supplies of critical minerals” the House Science, Space and Technology Committee will hold a hearing on “Research and Innovation to Address the Critical Materials Challenge.”

The hearing comes against the backdrop of increased domestic and international activity in the field of mineral resource policy amidst growing concern on Capitol Hill over how to secure mineral supply chains for domestic industries.  

The specter of using Rare Earths as an economic weapon – as threatened by China earlier this year – revealed that “the current trade war between the U.S. and China is in fact one front in a larger tech war: a competition to see which country will dominate the 21st Century Technology Age.”

And while Washington, DC remains locked in partisan fighting, there is a growing realization across party lines – as evidenced in a recent U.S. Senate hearing -  that a more “holistic approach” to critical mineral resource policy is warranted and that “when it comes to critical minerals extracting, processing, recycling… now is our call to action.”

Writes Dylan Brown for E&E Daily (subscription required):

“They are split on solutions, but many Republicans and Democrats share national security concerns about growing reliance on foreign countries, in particular China, for a slew of minerals used in military and renewable energy technology.”

Earlier this summer, the White House released its long-awaited federal strategy subsequent to the December 2017 executive order. Like long-standing legislation put forth by Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), S. 1317, and Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.), H.R. 2531, the strategy aims to reform the regulatory framework for mine permitting. 

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In a new piece for The Hill’s Congress Daily Blog, retired U.S. Army Brig. Gen. John Adams argues the recently released Defense Industrial Base Report and its findings, which we previously discussed here and here, represent a call to action for Congress and other stakeholders, because it shows that “[j]ust when we should be retooling for [...]

Earlier this spring, the Department of the Interior released its finalized Critical Minerals List.  Jeffery Green, president and founder of government relations firm J.A. Green & Company and member of the ARPN panel of experts reminded us in a recent piece for Defense News why the current focus on our over-reliance on foreign mineral resources [...]

“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 [...]

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 [...]

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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 [...]

During yesterday’s oversight hearing on the subject of “Examining Consequences of America’s Growing Dependence on Foreign Minerals,” before the House Natural Resources Committee, panelists raised some of the key issues we have consistently highlighted on our blog. Panelists included: Mr. Ronnie Favors, Administrator, U.S. Defense Logistics Agency, Strategic Materials, U.S. Department of Defense Dr. Murray [...]