Projects continued slow progress in 2022

A report from the U.S. Geological Survey in early 2022 said the U.S. is reliant on China for more than 50% of 25 mineral commodities. In 2021, imports made up more than one-half of the U.S. consumption of 47 nonfuel mineral commodities, and the U.S. was 100% net import reliant for 17 of those.

There is talk of more domestic production, and there has been government funding to boost some projects that are in the works, but not much seems to be happening to speed along these projects toward production. Throughout 2022, projects that we have been hearing about for years continued through the long, slow permitting process, and in some cases, projects continued with the long process of litigation over environmental concerns.

“The reality is that the federal process to permit a mine changes constantly depending on the administration, and is subject to political challenges and third-party lawsuits resulting in a staggering average of 10 to 12 years to permit an average project. Just let that sink in,” Steve Trussell, executive director of the Arizona Mining Association, wrote in a column in the June issue of Mining the West magazine.

“It is imperative to understand that many critical minerals we are importing are completely controlled by foreign governments that lack rigid environmental standards, meaningful worker safety programs, anti-corruption laws or ethical leadership,” Trussell said. “For instance, China currently controls the production of 80% of rare earth elements, 70% graphite, 59% lithium and 36% cobalt.”

On Nov. 15, 2021, President Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which includes a wide variety of provisions, including a requirement that the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service conduct a thorough self-assessment of their minerals permitting procedures.

“This sounds good in principle,” said Michael Visher, the administrator of the Nevada Division of Minerals. “However, it doesn’t address the one thing that impacts the permitting process the most, staffing. The BLM and USFS are under-staffed and under-resourced at current permit activity levels. Increased exploration and permitting activity resulting from the anticipated need for more minerals will only exacerbate the current challenges.”

On Feb. 22 Biden announced an array of investments his administration is making to boost the “Made in America” supply chain for critical minerals.

One of those investments was $35 million awarded to MP Materials of Las Vegas, which has a rare earth mine at Mountain Pass, California.

In response to the “Made in America” announcement, National Mining Association spokesperson Ashley Burke said, “We would hope that the administration’s examination of minerals supply chain issues would focus on how to restore U.S. mining’s competitiveness on the global stage, decrease our import reliance, and ensure that existing federal and state regulations are not duplicated. Instead, however, Interior’s language suggests it is using the supply chain review as a thinly veiled attempt to advance misguided mining law reforms that have failed in Congress time and time again.”

The year 2022 was the 150th anniversary of the Mining Law of 1872, and Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who has made many attempts to reform the law, introduced a Clean Energy Minerals Reform Act on April 26 that included a 12.5% royalty on new mining operations, along with many other provisions.

Many organizations and legislators made comments which might make people unfamiliar with mining think that since we are still operating under a 150-year-old law, mining companies are free to start up a mine and do whatever they want to the land.

“By keeping this outdated system going, we’re telling mining companies it’s okay to wreak total havoc on our environment and then leave American taxpayers to foot the cleanup bill,” Grijalva said in a press release.

On March 31, Biden announced plans to invoke the Defense Production Act to provide hundreds of millions in new subsidies for the mining of minerals critical for the wind, solar and electric vehicles industries.

Bernard Rowe, managing director of Ioneer, which is developing the Rhyolite Ridge lithium-boron project southwest of Tonopah, said in the company’s first quarter report that “This increased political focus had already been felt by Ioneer through the quarter with a clear shift in momentum for the Rhyolite Ridge Project.”

In December Perpetua Resources received a Defense Production Act award of $24.8 million to use toward environmental and engineering studies needed to advance the Stibnite Gold Project in central Idaho. This was the first critical minerals award using Ukraine Supplemental Appropriations funds. The Stibnite Gold mine would be the only domestic source of the critical mineral antimony, which is used in military cartridges and munitions. Currently, China, Russia, and Tajikistan control about 90% of the world’s antimony supply.

The Stibnite project is in the sixth year of review under the National Environmental Policy Act. The Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the project is in a public comment period that ends Jan. 10, 2023. A statement on the Defense Production Act award to the project points out that the award “does not confer any right or benefit through the permitting process.”

Lithium is just one of the minerals needed for a greener future with vehicles running on electric batteries, but lithium continued to be highlighted in the news throughout the year. Lithium Americas’ Thacker Pass project north of Winnemucca and Ioneer’s Rhyolite Ridge project southwest of Tonopah continued through their multi-year processes of permitting and dealing with environmental issues.

And there are currently around 15,500 claims across Nevada related to lithium, so many more projects could be coming along down the road.

Albemarle, the world’s largest lithium producer, has the only producing lithium mine in the U.S., Silver Peak southwest of Tonopah. Albemarle released its 2022 guidance in May and had to substantially increase its earnings predictions three weeks later as it renegotiated contracts with lithium customers as lithium prices continued to rise.

Albemarle said its 2022 volume of lithium was expected to be up 20 to 30 percent over 2021 primarily due to new capacity coming online.

By November 2022 the price of lithium was more than 10 times higher than 2020 prices, but some analysts expect the price to go way down over the next couple of years as more lithium mines begin production.

But whether that production will be in the U.S. remains to be seen.

On Feb. 25 the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection issued three major permits for the Thacker Pass project. Great Basin Resource Watch filed an appeal to the Water Pollution Control Permit, largely based on concerns that there had been inadequate analysis of the mine’s tailings facility. A study commissioned by GBRW said the tailings facility ”would probably have greater water content than any tailings storage facility ever constructed.” On June 28, the Nevada State Environmental Commission voted unanimously to affirm the Water Pollution Control Permit.