United States Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and three Senate colleagues on the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources took a bipartisan legislative step in early May to remedy the U.S. economy’s apparent over-reliance on foreign sources of “critical minerals,” such as the battery minerals lithium, rare earth elements, graphite, cobalt and nickel that are crucial to emerging 21st century industries that include electric vehicles and large battery usage in grid storage.
On May 3, committee chairman Murkowski, ranking committee member Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia), Martha McSally (R-Arizona), and Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) introduced the American Mineral Security Act that seeks to amend parts of the Cold War-era National Materials and Minerals Policy, Research and Development Act of 1980 and repeal the National Critical Materials Act of 1984. (Read the bill here.)
In the last two Congresses, Murkowski introduced similar stand-alone legislation and included a section on critical minerals in a broad, bipartisan energy bill, but given the tenor of the times with mounting U.S. trade tensions with China and multiple other countries around the globe — including outright sanctions against Russia — this legislation has a much greater chance of being enacted than her previous efforts.
Murkowski announced her latest move at a Washington, D.C., conference organized by London-based consultancy Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, who deserve kudos for keeping excitement going in a battery minerals sector that has been beaten down by falling commodity prices and depressed stock-market valuations for battery minerals juniors.
“Our nation’s mineral security is a significant, urgent, and often ignored challenge. Our reliance on China and other nations for critical minerals costs us jobs, weakens our economic competitiveness, and leaves us at a geopolitical disadvantage,” Murkowski said in a press statement. “I greatly appreciate the administration’s actions to address this issue, but Congress needs to complement them with legislation. Our bill takes steps that are long overdue to reverse our damaging foreign dependence and position ourselves to compete in growth industries like electric vehicles and energy storage.”
She noted that, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. imported at least 50% of 48 minerals, including 100% of 18 of them, in 2018. That includes 100% the U.S. supply of rare earth elements, graphite and indium.
Manchin said he is “grateful to continue working with Chairman Murkowski to find ways to reduce our reliance on foreign countries for critical minerals in a responsible way. Our legislation requires common sense steps to begin restoring American independence regarding critical minerals and strengthen our national security, diversify our economy and create job opportunities in our communities.”
The act as proposed would require, among other measures: the compilation and maintenance of a list of critical minerals; nationwide resource assessments for every critical mineral; the reformation of permitting processes for the Department of the Interior and Department of Agriculture Forest Service to reduce delays in the federal permitting of critical-minerals projects; the reauthorization of the National Geological and Geophysical Data Preservation Program; the authorization of research and development for processing, recycling and replacing critical minerals; and a requirement that the Secretary of Labor, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Science Foundation study the nation’s minerals workforce.
Keep in mind that the bill the four senators have introduced is primarily an industrial policy document, as the U.S. military would not be governed by the act if enacted.
National Defense Stockpile Center at Hillcrest, New York, in 2012. Credit: Tkeator at Wikimedia Commons.
The U.S. Defense Department continues to operate its National Defense Stockpile program through its well-established Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), whose Strategic Minerals branch’s mission is to “decrease and preclude dependence upon foreign sources or single points of failure for strategic materials in times of national emergency.”
Founded in 1939, DLA Strategic Materials stores 42 commodities with a current market value of over US$1.1 billion at six locations in the U.S., with commodities ranging from zinc, cobalt and chromium to platinum, palladium and iridium. Sales from its stockpiles in recent months have been in ferrochrome, chromium metal and tungsten, with total sales of US$6.6 billion since 1993, when the post-Cold War slimming down of critical-material stockpiles began.
I think the proposed legislation is necessary and useful. Unfortunately, I am very disappointed to see that at the same time, the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee will be having a hearing on the Mining Law Reform bill being introduced by Rep Grijalva (this week). Mining law reform is always a difficult subject, but it is clear that the proposed changes from Rep. Grijalva’s committee will severely impact, or cripple ongoing mining operations on Federal lands. The proposed legislation will make any new developments virtually impossible to develop. It will be is impossible for AMSA to be successful if the proposed changes for MLR are enacted. Perhaps a little common sense can be applied.