Mining Engineering’s Weekly Rundown: Episode 6

Welcome to Mining Engineering’s Weekly Rundown, where we break down the latest news shaping the mining industry. As usual, we’re diving into a few major headlines that are striking the sector.

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First off, in a major legal development, the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal aimed at halting the Resolution Copper project in Arizona. The case was brought by Apache Stronghold, an advocacy group representing members of the San Carlos Apache Tribe, which sought to block a federal land exchange involving land the tribe considers sacred. With the high court’s decision, a previous ruling in favor of the mine will stand, paving the way for the land swap to proceed. The Resolution Copper mine, a joint venture between Rio Tinto and BHP, is poised to become one of the largest copper operations in North America and could supply over a quarter of U.S. copper demand for decades. 

Secondly, in Utah, the U.S. Interior Department has fast-tracked approval for Anfield Energy’s Velvet-Wood uranium and vanadium mine following an unprecedented 14-day environmental review. The project is the first to be permitted under a new emergency authorization process introduced by the Trump administration to accelerate domestic energy and mining development. The Velvet-Wood site, located in San Juan County, had been previously mined and will now be revived to produce critical minerals used in both civilian and defense applications. U.S. officials say the move underscores a shift toward prioritizing mineral security, with uranium and vanadium seen as key to national energy resilience and technological advancement.

Finally, Perpetua Resources has received an additional $6.9 million from the U.S. Army to advance its Stibnite Gold Project in Idaho, bringing total Department of Defense funding to more than $80 million. The project is the only large-scale domestic source of antimony, a mineral essential to military-grade ammunition and increasingly important for electric vehicle batteries. Following China’s December 2024 ban on antimony exports to the U.S., the Pentagon has stepped up efforts to secure a domestic supply chain. The Stibnite project, which also contains a significant gold reserve, recently received its final federal permit and is inching closer to construction. 

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