The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
North of 60 Mining News - December 6, 2024
Upon his return to the White House, President-elect Donald Trump says his administration will endeavor to maximize Alaska's mining potential.
Streamlining the federal permitting process for large projects in the United States is expected to be high on the list of priorities for the 118th Congress.
Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan says the Biden administration imposed 67 federal actions to lock up resource development and land use in Alaska.
Average years from discovery to production for mineral projects by country.
A sample of copper-cobalt mineralization from the Bornite deposit on NANA Corp.-owned lands at the west end of the proposed Ambler Road.
The proposed Ambler Road would extend 211 miles west from the Dalton Highway.
A drill expands the resource at Graphite Creek, the largest known deposit of graphite in the United States.
Donald Trump
Dan Sullivan
Lisa Murksowski
Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse
With an incoming president that favors "reshoring" over "friendshoring" the nation's critical mineral supply chains and a Congress positioned to pass permitting reform and other mining-related legislation that has stalled in one chamber or the other for more than a decade, America's mining sector is poised for growth following the outcome of the Nov. 5 election.
"We are going to have a federal government – with the Senate, with the House, with the White House – that's going to be fully backing our mining industry," Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) said during a Nov. 6 impromptu address to a group of attendees at the Alaska Miners Association annual convention in Anchorage.
Considering that just two days later, President-elect Trump sent a video message vowing "to ensure Alaska can take advantage of every opportunity to explore and develop its tremendous resources," The Last Frontier state's mining sector seems especially well-positioned for backing from Washington.
Donald Trump
"During my second term, we will continue the fight for Alaska like never before," he said during the Nov. 8 address to Alaskans. "We will maximize Alaska's mining potential."
Trump also said his administration will ensure that the proposed 800-mile pipeline, which would connect the roughly 35 trillion cubic feet of natural gas on Alaska's North Slope to domestic and export markets, gets built and that defense spending in the state will increase.
"President Trump's address to the nation regarding Alaska means this president recognizes not only the mineral resource potential of Alaska and what it can do for our nation, but that he also recognizes the geopolitical importance of Alaska as an Arctic nation and as a nexus for the entire North Pacific region," Contango Ore President and CEO Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse told Mining News.
As the election results rolled in and it became apparent that Trump would be elected as the 47th president of the United States, there was a palpable sense of relief from the more than 1,000 attendees gathered in Anchorage for the AMA convention.
While the enormous push and investments into the clean energy transition by President Joe Biden drove up the demand for a broad range of critical minerals that Alaska is enriched with, a long list of decisions by the president and his administration hampered the ability to realize the state's mineral potential.
Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan says the Biden administration imposed 67 federal actions to lock up resource development and land use in Alaska.
"It has been a bit of a frustrating four years," Sullivan said during a Nov. 6 address to Alaska mining leaders.
Over that four-year span, the Alaska senator tallied 67 executive orders and actions imposed by the Biden administration to restrict resource development and land use in Alaska.
This list includes the reversal of the previously issued federal permits to build a 211-mile road to the Ambler Mining District, an area of Northwest Alaska enriched with high-grade deposits of copper, zinc, gold, silver, cobalt, and other critical minerals. This decision singlehandedly stifled tens of millions of dollars of exploration and development spending in the Ambler District, eroded investor confidence in Alaska mining projects, and either postponed or delayed billions of dollars in construction spending, wages, and revenues over the longer term.
Dan Sullivan
"There he goes again: President Biden's announcement on the Ambler Road is lawless, hurts Alaska's future and jobs for our state, undermines America's national security, and only makes our country more dependent on adversaries like Communist China for critical minerals," Sullivan said of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) decision earlier this year to reverse its previous approval of permits to build the Amber Road.
Sullivan likened the Ambler Road decision and 66 other White House actions to "lock up" resource development and land use in Alaska –more than it imposed on Iran over the last four years – to a war on Alaska's working families and economy.
He expects President-elect Trump to order an immediate about-face when it comes to many of the Biden White House policies impacting Alaska's economy.
"Not only is there going to be a ceasefire but that war is going to stop on Jan. 20," the senator said to a cheering crowd at the AMA convention.
Van Nieuwenhuyse, who has spent the last three decades as an executive of mining companies focused on unlocking Alaska's world-class mineral wealth, agrees that a Trump presidency swings the political pendulum in favor of Alaska's mining sector.
"The contrast couldn't be more stark," he said.
While Trump's vow to Make Alaska Great Again bodes well for the 49th State's mining and other resource sectors, bad blood between the president-elect and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) has the potential to impact Alaska-focused policies out of the White House.
Murkowski was an outspoken critic of Trump during his first term in office and was one of only seven Republican senators who voted to convict the former president for his actions leading to the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol.
Lisa Murksowski
Alaska's senior senator addressed "the elephant in the room" during a Nov. 13 address to business leaders during the Alaska Resource Development Council's (RDC) annual conference in Anchorage.
"I know that it is no great state secret that I am not a personal favorite of Donald Trump. He has made that known and I have made decisions in the past that probably have not sat well with him," she said.
Murkowski, however, assured the crowd that she would navigate her differences with Trump and would work with the president to advance the issues that are important to Alaska.
She pointed out that she has worked with other presidents that she did not always see eye-to-eye with, including Biden.
Murkowski says that despite her opposition to the reversal of the Ambler Road permitting decision and other actions by the current administration that inhibit resource development in Alaska, she was able to work with the White House to get the Willow oil project on Alaska's North Slope approved and to secure U.S. Department of Defense funding for the Graphite Creek project in western Alaska.
Upon Trump's return to the White House, Alaska's senior senator and the second-term president may be able to find common ground when it comes to reshoring America's critical mineral supply chains.
"If we want the United States to lead on advanced technologies and the industries of the future, if we truly want to ensure our national security and international competitiveness, we have to start at the start, with minerals, and build complete supply chains," she said in a video address for Benchmark Week 2024, a conference hosted by the world-leading battery materials supply chain analyst Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.
Murkowski and Trump are also aligned in believing that Alaska should be a key link in those supply chains.
"I do believe we have a brighter opportunity for mining moving forward," the Alaska senator said.
Streamlining the federal permitting process for large projects in the United States is expected to be high on the list of priorities for the 118th Congress.
Achieving Trump and Murkowski's shared view of establishing domestic mineral supply chains that include the development of Alaska's tremendous resources will require a significant streamlining of the mine permitting process in the U.S.
"This is an issue both parties have finally come to realize is stagnating the entire country," said Van Nieuwenhuyse. "Regardless of whether it is a wind farm, a mine or sanitation in a small village, the permitting process is broken."
A recent study completed by S&P Global found that it takes 29 years to develop a mine in the U.S., which is second only to Zambia (34 years), for the longest time from mineral discovery to mine production. This long lead time, which includes more than seven years in permitting, makes it difficult for American manufacturers to depend on domestic mineral sources that may be available in three decades.
Average years from discovery to production for mineral projects by country.
The 29-year window also does not fit well with the energy transition, which is demanding enormous quantities of minerals to build electric vehicles, solar panels, wind turbines, electrical transition lines, and other infrastructure needed to meet net-zero emissions targets set for 25 years from now.
In order to achieve the 2050 climate goals, S&P Global's Commodity Insights and Market Intelligence divisions estimate that global copper supply will need to nearly double over the next decade and that U.S. energy transition-related demand for lithium, nickel, and cobalt will be 23 times higher in 2035 than it was in 2021.
"Building the new infrastructure and adopting new technologies in the pursuit of net-zero 2050 goals will greatly depend on reconciling surging demand with long lead times and other challenges presently encountered in scaling up supply of critical materials," said S&P Global Vice Chairman Daniel Yergin.
Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse
Murkowski and many of her colleagues have been championing federal permitting reform that would help to reconcile the domestic mineral supply with America's rapidly growing demand that is being driven in large part by the energy transition.
None of the various iterations of mine permitting reform legislation, however, have been passed by both chambers of Congress and signed into law.
"Permitting reform is long overdue and with an aligned executive and Congress, I expect results," said Van Nieuwenhuyse.
Getting legislation that streamlines the federal permitting process for mines and other large projects in the U.S. to President Trump's desk for a signature is expected to be a high priority for the 118th Congress.
"We are going to need to do more, and I think there we will have an opportunity to do more in this new administration," Murkowski said when talking about federal permitting reform during her Nov. 13 address at the RDC conference.
What does a Trump administration committed to maximizing Alaska's tremendous mining potential and a Congress that will likely largely get behind policies that encourage the responsible reshoring of mineral supply chains mean for the state's mining sector?
One of the first big signs that the swing of the political pendulum in Washington will provide a significant boost to Alaska's mining sector over the coming years is the surge in Trilogy Metals Inc.'s share price since the elections.
A sample of copper-cobalt mineralization from the Bornite deposit on NANA Corp.-owned lands at the west end of the proposed Ambler Road.
As a junior mining company singularly focused on the exploration and development of mineral projects along and at the end of the proposed road to the Ambler Mining District, Trilogy may serve as the bellwether for what a White House and Congress aligned behind domestic mining means for the industry in Alaska.
Trilogy and mining major South32 Ltd. are equal partners in the Ambler Metals joint venture formed to develop mines at the high-grade deposits enriched with copper, zinc, gold, silver, cobalt, and other critical minerals on the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects (UKMP) – a 448,217-acre package of state and Alaska Native land owned by NANA Corp. covering much of the Ambler Mining District.
In 2020, the Ambler Metals JV completed a feasibility study that detailed plans for a financially robust open-pit mine at Arctic, the first UKMP deposit to be developed, that would produce 1.9 billion pounds of copper, 2.3 billion lb of zinc, 388 million lb of lead, 386,000 ounces of gold, and 40.6 million oz of silver over an initial 12-year mine life.
The feasibility of the Arctic Mine, however, is predicated on the development of the Ambler Road, which would allow the delivery of metal concentrates produced in the district to market.
The proposed Ambler Road would extend 211 miles west from the Dalton Highway.
The federal permits for the 211-mile road to Arctic and the other deposits in the Ambler District were approved by BLM in 2020 and then pulled for reevaluation after Biden took office. After roughly three years of review, the federal land manager delivered a new decision to not approve the federal permits to build the road.
Van Nieuwenhuyse, who founded Trilogy in 2011 and was the original CEO of the company, says BLM's decision earlier this year to deny permits to the Amber Road "is but one example of an administration not following the law." The mining executive is referring to a mandate Congress penned into the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) of 1980 requiring the federal government to permit access to the Ambler District.
As a result of BLM ignoring this Congressional mandate and denying permits for the Ambler Road, the price of Trilogy stock plummeted from around $2 per share when Biden took office to a low of 25 cents per share when BLM made its decision in April.
Trilogy shares rebounded from a 57-cent-per-share close on election day to $1.02 upon the Nov. 6 confirmation that Trump would be the next U.S. president. With investors feeling confident that the federal government will approve the Ambler Road under a Trump presidency, the share price for Trilogy now sits at around $1.15.
Considering that the BLM decision wiped out tens of millions of dollars of investments in exploration and development by Ambler Metals and other companies, along with tens of millions more likely in early Ambler Road development work, a reapproval of the Ambler Road itself would reinvigorate Alaska's mining industry.
The sector could be further energized if the White House and Congress push ahead with policies that achieve Trump's vow to "maximize Alaska's mining potential" and shore up confidence of investors who have shied away from Alaska mining projects in recent years.
While many of the policies coming out of the Biden administration were not favorable to Alaska's mining industry, the White House's push to transition the U.S. to electric vehicles powered by clean energy and steer America's critical mineral supply chains away from China spurred interest in Alaska's rich endowment of the minerals critical to the nation's economy, security, and clean energy future.
The positive impacts of the current administration's clean energy policies on Alaska were underscored by Graphite One Inc. President and CEO Anthony Huston being among a select group of industry leaders in attendance when President Joe Biden rolled out his plan to levy heavy tariffs on a wide range of goods from China, including natural graphite.
"I was honored to represent everyone at Graphite One in the meeting with President Biden," said Huston. "We appreciate his support for the renewable energy transition and G1 is excited to continue pushing forward to create a secure 100% U.S.-based supply chain for natural and synthetic graphite."
The federal support for Graphite One includes a $37.5 million grant to accelerate the completion of a feasibility study for an all-American graphite supply chain anchored by the Graphite Creek deposit in western Alaska and an invitation from the Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM) to apply for a $325 million loan to build a processing plant in Ohio that would upgrade material mined from Graphite Creek to the advanced anode material needed for EV batteries.
Huston says the federal backing for Graphite One's proposed mine-to-EV supply chain "underscores the urgent need to bring U.S. graphite supply into production and end the nation's 100% foreign dependency."
A drill expands the resource at Graphite Creek, the largest known deposit of graphite in the United States.
While Trump has been an outspoken critic of the Biden administration's clean energy policies and the well over $1 trillion spent on them, the incoming administration isn't likely to completely dismantle the energy transition set in motion, aligning with the current president when it comes to steering mineral supply chains away from China.
Herbert Smith Freehills, one of the world's most prestigious law firms, anticipates that a Trump White House and Republican Congress will result in a shift in the critical mineral supply chains in the U.S. and around the globe.
"The election of Trump for a second term is likely to see a strong focus on domestic production of critical minerals in the US, with increased tariffs, particularly directed at Chinese producers, as well as reduced regulations in the mining sector to support domestic production," Herbert Smith Freehills Partner Jay Leary penned in a recent analysis.
Most analysts don't foresee Trump fully repealing the more than $1 trillion Inflation Reduction Act that funded much of Biden's climate objectives but do anticipate that his administration will redirect a portion of it away from energy transition investments.
Leary expects that any negative impacts to the critical minerals sector by more fossil fuel-centric policies by Trump will be largely offset by permitting reform and other domestic mineral supply policies coming out of Congress and the White House.
The law firm with headquarters in London and Australia anticipates that Trump's focus on reshoring critical mineral supply chains, which is in contrast to the current administration's focus on leaning on friendshoring from allied nations, could be especially beneficial to mining companies doing business in the U.S.
Leary says the Trump administration's "focus on domestic production is likely to benefit US critical minerals producers – and foreign companies with a foothold in the US – but producers in Australia and EU who rely on exporting to the US may suffer."
Washington's focus on reshoring America's critical mineral supply chains and Trump's recognition of Alaska's tremendous mineral potential are likely good news for Graphite One and the other companies advancing Alaska projects enriched with antimony, cobalt, copper, nickel, and other minerals and metals critical to America's economy, security, and energy future.
Over his more than 16 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.
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