Renewed support for mining stretches beyond Washington

On page 6 of this issue, SME President Bill Hancock hands over his pen for the President’s Page to Debra Struhsacker, a mining and public lands consultant, to help explain the recent mining developments that have come out of Washington, DC this year. It’s a tall order to pack all of that information into one column, yet Struhsacker skillfully carries readers through a sea of executive orders (EO) that relate to domestic mining. For an industry that normally operates away from public view it has been remarkable to see how much attention the mining industry has attracted in recent months. The journey begins with the EO 14154 — Unleashing American Energy and EO 14156 — Declaring a National Energy Emergency. Struhsacker notes these orders “form the foundation for the energy, mining and permitting policies in subsequent executive orders.” Additional EOs have aims that include to eliminate all agency actions that burden domestic mining and mineral processing and to reassess the mineral potential of withdrawn public lands; define energy to include critical minerals and underscore the need for reliable and affordable energy and create the National Energy Dominance Council in the Executive Office of the President to advance President Trump’s energy and minerals agenda. They also aim to reinstate coal as an important fuel source for U.S. power plants and to accelerate the development of nuclear power. And it doesn’t stop there. Congress is considering a number of bills that could benefit the mining industry, including H.R. 4776, that would propose significant improvements to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) along with many other actions. Supporting these efforts is an unprecedented amount of investment in the mining sector by the federal government including the government’s willingness to invest directly in the sector. In October, the U.S. Department of Energy announed it has taken a five percent stake in Lithium Americas and an additional five percent stake in the Thacker Pass lithium mine. This follows the public-private partnership agreement with MP Materials that was announced in July. That agreement makes the federal government the largest shareholder of the company. Since then, Reuters reported that at least a dozen mining or mining-related companies with interests in lithium, copper and rare earths have inked deals with major Washington lobbying firms. Reuters found that there has been a sharp uptick in influence campaigns aimed at securing federal investment, permitting support and long-term procurement guarantees. The Biden administration also provided significant support for critical minerals development and processing as part of a broader industrial policy agenda. However, it relied largely on loans to the industry from the Department of Energy and Department of Defense and tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act. Outside of Washington, there is an increasing amount of interest in domestic critical mineral development as well. On Oct. 13 JP Morgan announced plans to hire bankers and invest up to $10 billion in U.S. companies critical to national security and economic resilience as part of a broader $1.5 trillion pledge. The 10-year initiative aims to facilitate, finance and invest in industries central to the growth of the U.S. economy, including defense, energy and manufacturing; presumably, this will include mining and mineral processing companies. JP Morgan chief executive officer Jamie Dimon said the investments were not driven by the Trump administration but would be 100 percent commercial. “This is a JPMorgan initiative,” Dimon told journalists on a call in which he was asked about the investment. “It has become painfully clear that the United States has allowed itself to become too reliant on unreliable sources of critical minerals, products and manufacturing — all of which are essential for our national security,” Dimon said in an earlier statement. JPMorgan said its new “security and resiliency initiative” would facilitate financing and investment across four strategic sectors: supply chain and manufacturing; defense and aerospace; energy independence and frontier technologies such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing. The interest in critical mineral development has been building for a few years, but what we are witnessing now seems to be something more, something that Struhsacker calls a “once-in-a-career opportunity.”

Renewed support for mining stretches beyond Washington

Authored by: William Gleason

To view the past issues of the UCA magazine you must be a member of SME/UCA.

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