[Senate Hearing 117-466]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 117-466
OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FACING
DOMESTIC CRITICAL MINERAL MINING,
PROCESSING, REFINING, AND REPROCESSING
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON
ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MARCH 31, 2022
__________
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
47-895 WASHINGTON : 2024
COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
JOE MANCHIN III, West Virginia, Chairman
RON WYDEN, Oregon JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming
MARIA CANTWELL, Washington JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho
BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont MIKE LEE, Utah
MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico STEVE DAINES, Montana
MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska
ANGUS S. KING, JR., Maine JOHN HOEVEN, North Dakota
CATHERINE CORTEZ MASTO, Nevada JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma
MARK KELLY, Arizona BILL CASSIDY, Louisiana
JOHN W. HICKENLOOPER, Colorado CINDY HYDE-SMITH, Mississippi
ROGER MARSHALL, Kansas
Renae Black, Staff Director
Sam E. Fowler, Chief Counsel
Peter Stahley, Professional Staff Member
Zahava Urecki, Professional Staff Member
Richard M. Russell, Republican Staff Director
Matthew H. Leggett, Republican Chief Counsel
Kate Farr, Republican Counsel
C O N T E N T S
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OPENING STATEMENTS
Page
Manchin III, Hon. Joe, Chairman and a U.S. Senator from West
Virginia....................................................... 1
Barrasso, Hon. John, Ranking Member and a U.S. Senator from
Wyoming........................................................ 4
WITNESSES
Fortier, Dr. Steve, Director, USGS National Minerals Information
Center, U.S. Department of the Interior........................ 9
Wulf, Abgail, Vice President, Critical Minerals Strategy and
Director of the Center for Critical Minerals Strategy, Securing
America's Future Energy........................................ 18
Melbye, Scott, President, Uranium Producers of America........... 27
Padilla, Julie, Chief Regulatory Officer, Twin Metals Minnesota.. 35
Ziemkiewicz, Dr. Paul, Director, West Virginia Water Research
Institute, West Virginia University............................ 42
ALPHABETICAL LISTING AND APPENDIX MATERIAL SUBMITTED
American Exploration and Mining Association:
Statement for the Record..................................... 139
Backcountry Hunters and Anglers et al.:
Statement for the Record..................................... 146
Barrasso, Hon. John:
Opening Statement............................................ 4
Chart comparing minerals used in electric and conventional
vehicles................................................... 5
Chart depicting minerals used in various energy technologies. 7
Chart depicting steps necessary to permit a mine on federal
land in Nevada............................................. 58
Daines, Hon. Steve:
Permitting timeline for the Rock Creek Mine.................. 69
Front pages from ten environmental reports................... 71
Fortier, Dr. Steve:
Opening Statement............................................ 9
Written Testimony............................................ 11
Responses to Questions for the Record........................ 101
Havasupai Tribal Council:
Letter for the Record addressed to Senator Manchin, dated
March 25, 2022............................................. 149
Letter for the Record addressed to Secretary Granholm, dated
March 25, 2022............................................. 151
Letter for the Record addressed to Secretary Granholm, dated
October 4, 2021............................................ 154
Heinrich, Hon. Martin:
Photograph of the Animas River............................... 62
International Organization of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental, and
Reinforcing Iron Workers et al.:
Letter for the Record........................................ 161
International Union of Operating Engineers:
Letter for the Record dated January 8, 2022.................. 156
Letter for the Record dated January 18, 2022................. 159
Laborers International Union of North America:
Statement for the Record..................................... 163
Comments for the Record dated January 19, 2022............... 168
Manchin III, Hon. Joe:
Opening Statement............................................ 1
Melbye, Scott:
Opening Statement............................................ 27
Written Testimony............................................ 29
Responses to Questions for the Record........................ 121
(The) Metals Company:
Letter for the Record........................................ 170
Minnesota Building and Construction Trades Council:
Letter for the Record........................................ 174
Minnesota Pipe Trades Association:
Letter for the Record........................................ 176
National Mining Association:
Letter for the Record........................................ 178
North Central States Regional Council of Carpenters:
Letter for the Record........................................ 185
Padilla, Julie:
Opening Statement............................................ 35
Written Testimony............................................ 37
Responses to Questions for the Record........................ 128
Risch, Hon. James E.:
Statement for the Record..................................... 187
Western Governors' Association:
Letter for the Record........................................ 189
Policy Resolution 2022-01.................................... 190
Policy Resolution 2018-09.................................... 196
Wulf, Abigail:
Opening Statement............................................ 18
Written Testimony............................................ 20
Responses to Questions for the Record........................ 117
Ziemkiewicz, Dr. Paul:
Opening Statement............................................ 42
Written Testimony............................................ 44
Responses to Questions for the Record........................ 135
OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FACING
DOMESTIC CRITICAL MINERAL MINING,
PROCESSING, REFINING, AND REPROCESSING
----------
THURSDAY, MARCH 31, 2022
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:08 a.m. in
Room SD-366, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Joe Manchin
III, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOE MANCHIN III,
U.S. SENATOR FROM WEST VIRGINIA
The Chairman. The meeting will come to order.
We are here today to talk about the opportunities and
challenges related to the production of critical minerals,
whether through traditional mining, processing, and refining or
innovative secondary recovery and reprocessing techniques.
Welcome to our witnesses and thank you for being here for this
discussion. I think it is going to be very, very informative.
Next week, we will continue this conversation about critical
mineral supply chains and discuss the demand side and how
industry will obtain and recycle these vital materials. These
conversations are so important right now as the horrifying
events in Ukraine show how problematic our reliance on foreign
suppliers who may not share our interests and values can be.
In the immediate term, our concern is, of course, Russia.
But I am also extremely concerned with China as the gatekeeper
of the critical minerals that we need for everyday life that we
have really taken for granted. In addition to the minerals
crucial to energy and defense applications, it makes no sense
to remain beholden to bad actors when we have abundant
resources and manufacturing know-how here in the United States.
And make no mistake, we are beholden, particularly when it
comes to many of the minerals that go into clean energy
technologies. That is why I sounded the alarm about going down
the path of EVs alone, and advocated for equal treatment for
hydrogen. China mines 60 percent of global rare earth elements
crucial to high-tech applications and magnets needed for
electric motors. Even more shocking, China processes almost 90
percent of the rare earths, regardless of where they are mined
in the world. The only large-scale producers of cobalt are in
the Democratic Republic of Congo, where Chinese interests
control many of the mines. And then, 65 percent of the
processing is done in China. Lithium is mined extensively by
Australia, an ally that produces over 50 percent of global
supply. However, China processes over 58 percent of global
lithium and uses that material to feed their lithium battery
manufacturing.
It is clear that we have a problem, and the United States
Geological Survey (USGS) concurs. The USGS has identified 50
minerals as critical, meaning that the supply is crucial to our
national and/or economic security and is at risk of a supply
disruption. I believe so strongly that we need to address
vulnerabilities rather than increase them. Now, that is not to
say that we have failed to take any action to address these
risks. This Committee got the Energy Act of 2020 across the
finish line at the end of the 116th Congress, which contains
several important provisions related to critical minerals. Then
Chairwoman Murkowski and myself led the effort to include the
American Minerals Security Act, which created the critical
mineral listing process and provided the first comprehensive
update to critical minerals and materials policies since 1980.
The Energy Act also included my bill to accelerate the research
and development needed to recover rare earth elements and other
critical minerals from coal and coal byproducts. The bipartisan
Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act built on those efforts
with serious investments to the tune of $3 billion to build
domestic battery material processing facilities and fund
battery processing demonstration projects. We also expanded the
Department of Energy's Innovative Energy Loan Guarantee Program
so that critical mineral projects are now eligible. Lesser
known but equally vital provisions made improvements to the
permitting process, accelerated the Geological Survey's mapping
efforts to support mineral development, and funded a program to
create a commercial demonstration of rare earth processing
facilities fed by mineral waste.
While we have made such good progress, there is so much
more to be done. Right now, we are not mining, processing,
manufacturing, or recycling these materials domestically, and
these issues are not solved overnight. Many actions we need to
take have long planning, permitting, and construction
timelines. So the work needs to start and start now, and the
Administration needs to help make responsible mining and
refining possible here rather than making it more difficult and
challenging. New mines will be needed both here in the United
States and all over the world, but we must not become so
desperate for these minerals that we throw our bedrock
environmental and labor laws out the window or rely on
countries that do not adhere to the same standards. Mining
companies today find it harder and harder to obtain and
maintain their social licenses to operate.
As I have said before, I believe that reasonable updates to
the Mining Law of 1872 would go a long way toward addressing
those concerns. It only takes one or two accidents to put a
stain on the entire industry, and when you lose buy-in from the
local communities, the entire nation can be affected. So it is
extremely important. I also believe that there is another area
that we should lean on--a North American energy alliance, and
work with our Canadian neighbors to source what doesn't make
sense to source domestically. And there is no reason the United
States cannot utilize our manufacturing base and leverage our
relationships with friendly nations like Australia and Canada
to ensure that their critical minerals are sent here for
processing instead of China. However, in order to accomplish
this, we first need to establish our own domestic separation,
processing, and refining capabilities and make sure that we are
not exporting our own critical minerals for processing
somewhere else. So while we have made some strides in the laws
I have mentioned, that was just the first step. I want to know
where other challenges exist and the opportunities to tackle
them. Finally, we should be getting creative and exploring
innovative solutions to the problem using new approaches to
extract critical minerals like rare earths from old mine
tailings, waste materials, and even acid mine drainage can be
an opportunity to address an environmental problem and the
critical mineral challenges at the same time.
To that end, I am very pleased to have Dr. Ziemkiewicz, am
I close, Dr. Z?
Senator Barrasso. No, no, he's shaking his head, no.
[Laughter.]
The Chairman. I am so happy to have Dr. Z. with us today.
[Laughter.]
The Chairman. He is going to share the good work he is
doing as the Director of the West Virginia Water Resources
Institute at West Virginia University, and that is not too far
from here. And I am going to tell you, if you get a chance to
go, and I don't know if you are interested, but you ought to
see what they are doing. You ought to see what they are
extracting and how they are doing it. And they are going to
commercial now, right? Yes. As many of you know, our coal
communities bear the scars that have mined the coal to power
the country to be the greatness that we are. This legacy
includes acid mine drainage that pollutes streams across West
Virginia as a result of abandoned and bond-forfeited mines, but
while this harmful pollution is a blight on our communities,
Paul and his team have done incredible work in partnership with
the National Energy Technology Lab and West Virginia Department
of Environmental Protection. They are demonstrating that we can
clean up these problem areas while extracting the rare earth
elements that we need in the process. This work has the
potential to be a game changer, not just for my state, but for
the entire country. And I am told that it could even assist
many of our western states with acid mine drainage from
hardrock mines.
Dr. Z., I am thrilled to have you with us today and look
forward to hearing about the progress that you all have been
making.
In closing, the critical mineral issue is vital, urgent,
and important to our national economic security and I truly
believe that this is a bipartisan issue that we can work
together to address, and we have taken some steps in that
direction. Senators Murkowski, Risch, Cassidy, and I recently
sent a letter asking the President to utilize the Defense
Production Act to accelerate our production of critical
minerals for lithium-ion batteries. It sounds like there might
be an announcement being made today to take steps in that
direction, and I welcome that news and look forward to seeing
the details. Additionally, Senator Barrasso and I have
introduced the Mining Schools Act of 2022 to ensure that we
have the next generation of STEM graduates to tackle these
problems. Demand is increasing for minerals vital to clean
energy and national security technologies, as well as for every
day tools and comforts that we take for granted. We must take
action domestically or we will be putting our own security at
risk by allowing China this power over our supply chains.
Now, I appreciate all of you today for being here--the
witnesses--and we are going to learn an awful lot. I am going
to turn to Senator Barrasso for his opening remarks now.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN BARRASSO
U.S. SENATOR FROM WYOMING
Senator Barrasso. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman,
and I appreciate your partnership and your dedication to the
work that is being done today and for holding this very
important, critical hearing on an issue so important to our
nation and our nation's future.
Upon taking office, President Biden returned the United
States to the Paris Climate Agreement, one that I see as deeply
flawed and unfair. The President pledged to reduce our nation's
greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 52 percent below the levels
from where they were in 2005 and get all of this done in the
next eight years, by the year 2030. To achieve these
objectives, the President says he wants to make our nation's
power sector carbon free by 2035. He also aims to ensure that
so-called zero emission vehicles make up 50 percent--half of
all new vehicle sales--just eight years from now. In short,
President Biden wants to dramatically increase the number of
wind turbines, solar panels, and electric vehicles in the
country, and this means a massive increase in the demand for
critical minerals.
Last year, the International Energy Agency published a
report on critical minerals. It included two noteworthy charts.
The first chart shows how electric vehicles require far more
minerals than vehicles with internal combustion engines. So a
conventional car needs this much, electric car--take a look at
that. And this is the list of all of the different critical
minerals that are there and how many kilograms are needed per
vehicle on each of the critical minerals--ones that we do not
have access to, do not have here, and here we have the
conventional vehicle versus an electric car.
[The chart referred to follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Senator Barrasso. The second chart that I want to show from
the International Energy Agency report on critical minerals
shows how wind turbines and solar panels require far more
minerals than nuclear, than natural gas, and the coal-fired
power plants. So here you have the critical minerals needed for
natural gas, coal, nuclear, solar, onshore wind, and offshore
wind. And look at that jump for the offshore wind and onshore
wind compared to natural gas and coal. It is a remarkable
difference in the need for critical minerals to go and move our
economy from where we are in energy to where the Biden
Administration promises to be in eight years.
[The chart referred to follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Senator Barrasso. So new demand for minerals cannot only
come from the United States, it will come from the entire
world. The World Bank recently looked at the demand for copper.
Copper is a big part of those signs. It found that to meet the
world's demand for copper in the next 25 years, the world will
have to mine the same amount of copper that the world has mined
in the last 5,000 years. Mr. Chairman, these figures are
astonishing. Despite his climate pledges, President Biden has
done nothing meaningful to boost American mineral production.
In fact, this Administration--the Biden Administration--has
only made it more difficult to access minerals here at home in
America. In March of last year, the U.S. Forest Service
rescinded an environmental impact statement for a land swap
necessary for a major copper mine in Arizona. In August of last
year, the Bureau of Land Management proposed withdrawing ten
million acres in Wyoming from mineral exploration. The list
goes on. In January of this year, Interior Secretary Haaland
canceled leases for a new nickel and copper mine in Minnesota,
and last month, the Department of the Interior said it would
withdraw a right-of-way for a road necessary for a new copper
mine in Alaska. The Department of the Interior also proposed
designated critical habitat for a flower that complicates the
permitting of a new lithium mine in Nevada.
Mr. Chairman, President Biden's war on American energy is
not confined to oil and natural gas and coal. His policies, the
policies of this Administration, are killing the development of
resources needed for the alternatives that the President says
he wants. Now currently, it takes an average of 10 years to
permit a new mine in the United States, and he wants all of
this in place in eight years. It just doesn't add up. We have
one of the lengthiest permitting processes in the world. Now,
Canada and Australia, which do have robust environmental and
safety standards, permit new mines within two or three years.
There is no reason we should not be able to replicate their
success here in America. The Administration is talking about
using the Defense Production Act for minerals. Unless the
President streamlines permitting, we should not expect to see
any meaningful increase in American mineral production.
Currently, the United States is 100 percent dependent--100
percent dependent--on imports of 17 key minerals. We are over
50 percent dependent on imports of another 30 minerals. If
President Biden does not reverse course and stand up to the
mining opponents in his own party, it is only going to get
worse, and it will mean that we will continue to fund our
adversaries, as we are doing today with Russia.
We have seen this all too very clearly since Russia's
invasion of Ukraine. While President Biden finally banned
imports of Russian oil, natural gas, and coal, we continue to
import Russian uranium. President Biden can and should ban
imports of Russian uranium. He should also help boost American
uranium production. As with other critical minerals, we have
the resources here in the United States, we just need the
political will to use them.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
I would like to turn to the panel of witnesses that we have
with us, and I thank each and every one of you.
Dr. Steve Fortier, Director of the USGS National Minerals
Information Center with the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Ms. Abigail Wulf, Vice President of Critical Minerals
Strategy and Director of the Center for Critical Minerals
Strategy with Securing America's Future Energy.
We have Mr. Scott Melbye. Is that correct? Okay. President
of Uranium Producers of America.
Ms. Julie Padilla, and she is Chief Regulatory Officer at
Twin Metals Minnesota.
Dr. Paul Ziemkiewicz--ah ha, nailed that one, didn't I,
Paul?
[Laughter.]
The Chairman. Director of the West Virginia Water Research
Institute, West Virginia University.
We will start with Dr. Fortier.
OPENING STATEMENT OF DR. STEVE FORTIER, DIRECTOR, USGS
NATIONAL MINERALS INFORMATION CENTER, U.S. DEPARTMENT
OF THE INTERIOR
Dr. Fortier. Good morning, Chairman Manchin, Ranking Member
Barrasso, and members of the Committee. Thank you for the
opportunity to discuss the U.S. Geological Survey efforts
related to critical minerals. The USGS quantifies the geologic
potential for undeveloped mineral deposits and in mine waste
across the nation and globe, and provides data on global
supply, demand, and consumption of mineral commodities
essential to the nation's economic and national security
interests. USGS mineral resource science looks across
applications and economic sectors, analyzes near-term supply
chain disruption potential, and evaluates long-term strategies
for securing supply chains.
Monitoring supply chains for individual minerals across
manufacturing sectors allows us to understand supply risk in
the short-term and anticipate potential disruptions in the
future. USGS data show that domestic and global demand for
mineral commodities continues to increase. An increasingly
broad range of mineral commodities is used in consumer and
national security applications, especially those involving
advanced technologies. While the United States remains a major
mineral producer, with an estimated total value of non-fuel
mineral production of $90.4 billion in 2021, reliance on
imports for essential mineral raw materials, as documented by
the USGS, has increased markedly over the past several decades.
In 2021, the nation was 100 percent import-reliant for 17
mineral commodities and at least 50 percent import-reliant for
an additional 30 mineral commodities. Thirty-one minerals
listed by the USGS in 2021 as having greater than 50 percent
net import reliance are on the current critical minerals list.
China is a major import source for 18 of those critical
minerals.
The Energy Act of 2020 defined critical minerals as those
which are essential to the economic or national security of the
United States, have a supply chain that is vulnerable to
disruption, and serve an essential function in the
manufacturing of a product, the absence of which would have
significant consequences for the economic or national security
interests of the United States. Based on the Energy Act of 2020
definition, minerals and materials such as fuel minerals,
water, and common varieties of industrial minerals, such as
sand and gravel, are excluded from the definition of a critical
mineral. In 2021, the USGS published a report entitled,
``Methodology and Technical Input for the Review and Revision
of the U.S. Critical Minerals List,'' to comply with a
requirement of the Energy Act of 2020. After posting a draft
revision to the critical minerals list in the Federal Register
and consideration of public comments on the methodology in the
draft list, the final revised list was published on February
24, 2022. The 2022 list of critical minerals contains 50
individual mineral commodities. It differs from the 2018 list
of critical minerals by individually listing the rare earth
elements and platinum-group elements by specific element forms
rather than its two groups. Nickel and zinc were added to the
list, and helium, potash, rhenium, strontium, and uranium were
removed from the list, the latter to comply with the language
in the Energy Act of 2020.
There are multiple mechanisms to reduce the supply risk for
mineral commodities, including (1) reducing demand through
manufacturing improvements or substitution with other
materials, (2) increasing supplies obtained from reliable
trading partners, and (3) increasing domestic secondary
production, such as recycling and reprocessing mine waste or
domestic primary production--that is, mining. Both domestic
primary production and secondary production will be supported
by an updated and more detailed understanding of potential
resources as envisioned by the USGS Earth Mapping Resources
Initiative (Earth MRI). The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law
funding to support Earth MRI is a historic investment in
modernizing the nation's mapping of resources, both those still
in the ground and those in mine wastes. Earth MRI is a
partnership of the USGS, the State Geological Surveys, and
other federal, state, tribal, and private sector organizations
to modernize the nation's surface and subsurface mapping. The
Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provided $320 million over five
years to the USGS to support Earth MRI's national mapping and
interpretation to mineral resources data as well as $24 million
for the preservation of geophysical, geochemical, and
geological data and samples. Data collected through Earth MRI
will support development of a national mine waste inventory,
assessments quantifying the nation's domestic mineral
resources, as called for in the Energy Act of 2020, and
identification of locations suitable for sustainable
development as called for in the June 6, 2021 report developed
and pursuant to Executive Order 14017, ``America's Supply
Chains.''
Thank you again for the opportunity to speak with the
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee about the USGS
work on critical minerals and for your continued interest in
this important topic.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Fortier follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Senator Barrasso [presiding]. Thank you, Dr. Fortier.
Ms. Wulf.
OPENING STATEMENT OF ABIGAIL WULF, VICE PRESIDENT,
CRITICAL MINERALS STRATEGY AND DIRECTOR OF THE
CENTER FOR CRITICAL MINERALS STRATEGY, SECURING
AMERICA'S FUTURE ENERGY
Ms. Wulf. Thank you for having me here this morning.
Chairman Manchin, Ranking Member Barrasso, and distinguished
members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to
speak today.
Given the distinguished mining experts on the panel, I plan
to focus my opening remarks a little further downstream in the
mineral supply chain. We would not be here talking about
critical minerals, in fact, they would not be considered
critical at all, if it were not for the stuff that they go
into, and this stuff happens to be critically important for the
U.S. economy and national security. This stuff includes
batteries, semiconductors and electric vehicles, renewable
energy, and advanced weapon systems, all of which are made of
and powered by minerals and mined materials. We are only going
to need more of these things as the world increasingly
transitions to an electric, connected, and autonomous future.
And make no mistake, the future is electric, not because of
government financial support or environmental consciousness,
which are certainly major factors today, but because our lives
are becoming more digital and autonomous, which inherently
means more electric.
Also, EVs are becoming more economically viable on their
own terms, paving the way for mass adoption for average
consumers. In fact, major U.S. automakers have already pledged
to boost their share of EVs anywhere from 50 to 100 percent of
new auto production over the next 20 years. All of those
millions of new EVs will run on batteries, and all of those
batteries will require processed minerals in seismically vaster
quantities than are being produced today. Our industries
compete in a global marketplace, and our key sectors, led by
our auto sector, will rely on these critical materials to
effectively compete and lead the electrified world. But as
things stand, without some significant course corrections on
America's critical minerals enterprise, the leading automobile
power will not be the United States. It will be China, not
because of superior design or technology, but because of their
massive head start and established market power, if not utter
dominance in all aspects of the supply chain that powers these
vehicles.
But simply mining alone does not begin to address the
fundamentals of America's mineral supply chain challenge. Where
we are most lacking, and where China is most dominant, is in
that crucial but largely hidden processing phase and midstream
component production. One simply cannot dig up a rock and stick
it in a Tesla. You have to crush it, smelt it, and refine it
into precursor material that is then sold to somebody else to
turn it into battery guts--namely cathodes, anodes, and
electrolytes. Today, the United States has less than four
percent of all minerals processing capacity and makes zero
percent of the world's cathodes and anodes. By contrast, China
is the world's largest processor of copper, nickel, cobalt,
lithium, and rare earth elements, and they control 60 percent
of anode production and 40 percent of global cathode
production. Consider that in 2019 about 70 percent of the
world's cobalt supply was mined in the DRC (Democratic Republic
of Congo), but more than 70 percent of that cobalt was refined
in or controlled by China. The first metric is an act of
nature. The second is an act of policy.
We cannot risk the U.S. auto sector being hollowed out. It
contributes more than a trillion dollars to our economy and it
indirectly makes up more than five percent of our GDP. Made in
America cannot just mean assembling, essentially snapping
together vehicle parts whose most important components come
from somewhere else, especially when that is an unreliable
foreign source. Laying claim to the automobile supply chain of
the future will take bigger, bolder investments in mineral
processing and battery component production. The $6 billion in
the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is a good start, but there is
much more that should be done, as outlined in my submitted
testimony. This includes the all-important human capital
factor, as America simply does not have enough metallurgists
and other mineral experts for the scale of the effort this
challenge requires.
Finally, it will take a commitment to supply chain
transparency, including potentially a new EV labeling
requirement that shows where different components and materials
come from and at what human and environmental cost. This will
require working with like-minded allies and partners in both
interests and values, including and especially our North
American allies, to level the playing field and create a new
race to the top with high environmental and labor standards for
the raw materials that will power our tech-driven economies.
Thank you for your time today, and I look forward to your
questions.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Wulf follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Senator Barrasso. Thank you so very much for the testimony,
Ms. Wulf.
Mr. Melbye.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SCOTT MELBYE, PRESIDENT,
URANIUM PRODUCERS OF AMERICA
Mr. Melbye. Thank you, Chairman Manchin and Ranking Member
Barrasso and Committee members. I am the Executive Vice
President of Uranium Energy Corp., with operations in the
States of Wyoming and Texas, and I am also the President of the
Uranium Producers of America. As a second-generation American
uranium miner with 37 years of experience in the nuclear fuel
industry, I am proud to lead the trade association representing
the domestic uranium mining and conversion industry. It is an
honor to testify regarding America's dangerous reliance on
strategic competitors for critical minerals like uranium.
Nuclear power is an indispensable part of the American
economy, powering one in five U.S. homes and supplying over 50
percent of our carbon-free power. As we integrate more and more
intermittent sources of energy, like wind and solar onto the
grid, nuclear power represents a crucial carbon-free baseload
capacity that ensures that the lights always stay on.
Unfortunately, almost none of the fuel needed to power
America's nuclear fleet today comes from domestic producers.
Employing predatory market practices, state-owned entities in
Russia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan now supply nearly half of
the uranium consumed by U.S. nuclear utilities. We estimate
that more than $1 billion per year in nuclear fuel purchases
are flowing from the United States to ROSATOM, the Russian
state atomic energy company, which is an extension of the
Kremlin, and clearly part of the Russian military complex. It
is simply unconscionable to allow U.S.-dollar uranium purchases
to continue funding the Putin war machine.
Members of the Committee, I would like to offer a roadmap
for ending U.S. reliance on Russia for nuclear fuel. First, ban
imports of Russian uranium. The UPA strongly supports
bipartisan legislation introduced by Ranking Member Barrasso
and Representatives Pete Stauber and Vicente Gonzalez in the
House to impose a ban on Russian uranium imports. The U.S. has
ample uranium resources and the capacity to produce them at the
highest environmental, safety, and health standards in the
world. Together, with free-world uranium suppliers in Canada,
Australia, and Western Europe, UPA's member companies stand
ready to work with U.S. utilities, Congress, and the
Administration to ensure that every existing and planned
domestic reactor will be able to maintain operations.
Second, establish the strategic uranium reserve. The
reserve is the result of multiple federal investigations and
studies, which determined that America's reliance on uranium
imports threatens national security. Congress funded the
reserve at $75 million for the Fiscal Year 2021, yet 15 months
later, the DOE has not yet stood up the program. DOE must stop
delaying and move forward on this program immediately. In the
meantime, Congress must continue its support of the reserve and
provide the full funding initially requested by DOE--$150
million per year.
Third, create a domestic source of high-assay low-enriched
uranium, or HALEU. This fuel is critical for the advanced
reactor projects that have been such a high priority for this
Committee. The only current commercial source of HALEU is
Russia. Without swift action to develop alternatives, the next
generation of nuclear power will be entirely dependent on
Russia for fuel. The crucial immediate step is the down-
blending of existing inventories through which DOE could create
a stopgap source of HALEU while domestic capabilities for long-
term supply can be established.
Fourth, uranium must be maintained on the federal critical
minerals list. Uranium's non-fuel uses are critical to national
security. According to the USGS, these include radiation
shields, counterweights, armor piercing kinetic energy
penetrators, as well as life-saving medical isotope production.
Our rare earth and critical mineral dependence on China is
strikingly similar to what could happen with uranium if we do
not act with urgency. My important message to you today is that
the domestic uranium industry can meet this challenge. Given a
level global playing field, the domestic uranium industry has
the capacity to produce significant quantities of competitive
and geopolitically secure uranium. While almost all of our
capacity is idle today, the domestic industry can produce over
20 million pounds of annual production, enough to fuel close to
half of our U.S. reactors. A robust, domestic supply chain for
nuclear fuel has never been more necessary. We stand ready to
meet America's energy and national security needs, and I look
forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Melbye follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Senator Barrasso. Well, thanks so much, Mr. Melbye.
Ms. Padilla.
OPENING STATEMENT OF JULIE PADILLA, CHIEF
REGULATORY OFFICER, TWIN METALS MINNESOTA
Ms. Padilla. Good morning, Chairman Manchin, Ranking Member
Barrasso, and members of the Committee. Thank you for this
opportunity to testify. My name is Julie Padilla and I serve as
the Chief Regulatory Officer for Twin Metals Minnesota. I am
here today to testify that if this country wants to produce its
own nickel, it has to mine in Minnesota. If we want our own
cobalt, platinum, and palladium, we have to get it in
Minnesota. Northeastern Minnesota, where Twin Metals has
proposed to operate, sits on top of the largest undeveloped
deposit of these minerals in the world. The area contains a
stunning 95 percent of the U.S. nickel resources, 88 percent of
our cobalt, 75 percent of our platinum group metals, and a
third of the country's copper. A domestic source for critical
minerals means Minnesota.
I know this Committee has a deep understanding of why these
minerals are fundamental for fighting climate change with
technologies like electric vehicles, for our national security,
for bringing supply chains home, and for creating American
jobs. That is why we at Twin Metals are passionate about
advancing a modern, environmentally safe, underground critical
minerals project. And while the President himself has said we
should do more of this here at home, the Departments of
Agriculture and the Interior have instead taken actions to
prohibit critical mineral mining in Minnesota. In October of
last year, the Department of Agriculture requested to ban
mining on a quarter million acres of federal land in Minnesota,
taking virtually all of our country's nickel, cobalt, platinum,
and palladium off the table. This proposed ban fails to
recognize the 130-year history of mining in the same watershed,
including operating non-ferrous mines just over the border in
Canada, and this decision was made without reviewing the mine
plan our company put forward.
Let me be clear on that--we have never asked for anything
but a fair process, a thorough review of our mine plan. To
proceed with a mining ban means the government is not going to
consider the best information in front of it to determine
whether mining can be done safely in this region. In addition,
our mineral leases have been the subject of a political back-
and-forth, most recently canceled again in January, which
further delays our project and discussions we have had with
domestic manufacturers who are interested in the direct
purchase of our nickel and cobalt. The United States simply is
no longer considered to have a stable regulatory climate. The
precedent set by these actions shows that a company can invest
hundreds of millions of dollars in this country, create good-
paying, reliable jobs, earn the support of its local
communities, and spend a decade developing a project, only for
it to be arbitrarily canceled.
It is not just mining at risk here. Political battles are
being created for projects ranging from recycling facilities to
natural gas pipelines to solar arrays and wind farms. Project
opponents are sowing distrust in the very regulatory system
that these projects depend on for fairness and certainty. And
these decisions have real-world impacts. Instead of expanding
our team as planned, this month we had to lay off a third of
our workforce and end millions of dollars in local contractor
work while we seek to have these decisions reversed. As the
project is stalled, so are jobs for local labor unions and the
region's economic development. Our ability as a country to
fight climate change and produce electric vehicles is in the
hands of foreign powers, including Russia and China. Unless the
United States fosters a reliable, fair, and timely process for
environmental review of domestic mining projects, as it has in
the past, we will be required to get these resources from
foreign sources.
We already have a system for determining whether projects
like ours can operate safely and protect the environment. NEPA
is exhaustive. It is science-based, and it is prescribed in
law, and Twin Metals should be undergoing that process right
now. Instead, I am unfortunately here today because we, like so
many others, are fighting arbitrary actions aimed at
circumventing that process in order to pick winners and losers
based on politics rather than reviewing the science and facts.
The United States has an opportunity to access its domestic
mineral resources in an environmentally safe way and under the
highest of labor and environmental standards. We can mine here
better than anywhere else in the world, but the United States
will not be able to do that under the current regulatory
process that is unpredictable, subject to political
manipulation with changing rules in each Administration, and in
conflict with the priorities of our nation.
It is past time for Congress to take action. I ask that you
rescind the proposed mineral withdrawal and bring stability,
fairness, and predictability back to the regulatory process for
mining in this country. Thank you, and I look forward to
answering your questions.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Padilla follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman [presiding]. Thank you.
Finally, We are going to have Dr. Z. for his opening
remarks.
OPENING STATEMENT OF DR. PAUL ZIEMKIEWICZ, DIRECTOR,
WEST VIRGINIA WATER RESEARCH INSTITUTE, WEST VIRGINIA
UNIVERSITY
Dr. Ziemkiewicz. Well, thank you, Chairman Manchin and
Ranking Member Barrasso and members of the Committee for the
opportunity to discuss today the work that we have been doing
to recover critical minerals and rare earth elements from acid
mine drainage. I am the Director of the Water Research
Institute of West Virginia University. I have been there for 34
years, and most of what I have been doing is making acid mine
drainage a predictable, recoverable, treatable, and preventable
pollutant. It is the biggest single pollutant in the northern
Appalachian and central Appalachian streams. Thousands of miles
are impacted by acid mine drainage. Most of our work has been
taking place in the prediction and developing industry scale
processes for making it not be a problem, even though it
potentially could be.
At the same time, when the opportunity came up from the
Department of Energy to look at coal waste products for
recovery of rare earth elements, we thought this would be a
good idea because acid mine drainage is essentially free acid,
and acid is what is needed to leech rare earth elements out of
host rock. So if you have a conventional hardrock mine for rare
earth elements, you have to get a mining permit, you have to
dig it up, grind up the rock, and subject it to strong acids
and bases in order to put the rare earth elements in solution.
We already start there. And furthermore, you cannot treat acid
mine drainage to Clean Water Act standards without recovering
all of the metals, including the rare earth elements. So we
developed a process. It is in the development stage right now
to the extent that we are building a thousand-gallon-a-minute
plant with the West Virginia DEP near Mount Storm, West
Virginia. That plant is part of the Office of Special
Reclamation at DEP, and that takes over bond forfeiture sites
and treats those discharges.
We see this as--and so does DEP see this as--an opportunity
to recover value in the treatment of acid mine drainage rather
than simply spending money for an environmentally useful
purpose, but there is actually a return on that investment. We
can actually cost out, for example, how much lime it would take
to neutralize all the acid coming into this plant and calculate
the value of the rare earths that would be recovered, and it is
about three times more. So this would more than cover the main
operations and management cost of these big treatment plants.
We see a lot of opportunities, not only in the coal world, but
also hardrock world. We have a relationship with Montana
Resources at Butte, Montana. We have characterized the acid
mine drainage coming into the Horseshoe Bend plant there. It is
an excellent resource, and the interesting thing is the makeup
of the rare earth elements coming into these hardrock mines and
coal mines are almost identical. And when I say identical, they
are not only the same distribution of elements, but it is
heavily skewed toward the heavy rare earth elements.
If you open a conventional hardrock mine like the one we
have in Mountain Pass, California, it is a bastnasite deposit,
and it is almost all light rare earths. We are 45 to 50 percent
heavy rare earths. The Chinese, for example, are desperate to
get their hands on heavy rare earth elements. We can start with
that and that is the basis for the feasibility study that we
just finished up for the DOE that would build a central
concentrator in West Virginia for rare earth element recovery
from hardrock and acid mine drainage-based resources. And we
found that the economics are very favorable. This would start
out mainly because of the heavy rare earth distribution, and
also the cobalt, nickel, and manganese that we have in acid
mine drainage. All of these contribute to a self-sustaining--
organically self-sustaining--facility that could then start
bringing in feedstock from other sources, not just hardrock
mines, but also other sources and waste sources, phosphate
mines, bauxite tailings. We are looking at all of these right
now as potential feedstocks coming into this central plant.
I will finish by saying that we looked at almost all of the
international applications under--it is a fiduciary process
that is required to attract investment money for a new mine--
NC43. You have probably--anyway, almost all of those are
producing, and it is assumed that we are making money just by
making mixed rare earth oxides. Our concentrator would take
that as a feedstock and then start separating those into
individual elements and then reducing them to metal, which is
then ready for industrial uses and manufacturing uses in the
country. So not only would we basically assume that role, but
we could fill that role and fund it and get it starting off the
ground with the resources that we know we have and then start
bringing in other resources as time goes on.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Ziemkiewicz follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you, and thank all of you.
We are going to start with our questions now. Dr. Z., I am
going to continue right where you stopped. In West Virginia, we
have seen all the leachate and what it does to our streams. We
have seen that Cheat River is probably the one that got hit the
hardest and how much money have we spent trying to get Cheat
River back into a productive stream? It has been unbelievable.
But with that, as you are going to be processing this and
extracting these rare earth minerals, are you all basically
treating the water before it goes back too? Is that all part of
the process?
Dr. Ziemkiewicz. Yes, it is.
The Chairman. So the water that--you are basically
capturing it coming off of these mines, okay? I know that
Senator Heinrich and everyone from the West as far as on
hardrock mining--we have had a lot of discussions. This is
something that could be unbelievable because these mines have
already been there. They have already been polluting. They have
been causing a lot of problems all over the country. Have we
done inventory and identified how much potential is there and
how it is possible for us? First of all, I do not think we
would have to--the permitting process shouldn't be hard for us
to go back in and clean up what you got. It is not a new mine
permit. It is not all the bonding that goes into it because a
lot of the bonds have been forfeited, and we are taking away
the obligations they have had and made it almost impossible--
that bankrupted a lot of companies.
So I understand the whole business chain to this thing. The
bottom line is, this is the quickest way. What type of
production are you talking about that we can meet the needs of
America? Because we have got an insatiable appetite right now
for rare earth minerals. Could this be ten percent? Fifty
percent?
Dr. Ziemkiewicz. We have identified in some of the surveys
that we have done for DOE something like one and a half tons
per day to three tons per day.
The Chairman. Off of what? Off of.
Dr. Ziemkiewicz. Hardrock and coal in the United States.
The Chairman. Both?
Dr. Ziemkiewicz. Yes, so that comes to about, yes, so just
in terms of rare earth elements.
The Chairman. I got it.
Dr. Ziemkiewicz. So if you are adding--there is almost an
identical amount of cobalt and nickel. So for every ton of rare
earth we produce, we produce a ton of cobalt, another ton of
nickel, and then maybe 20 times that amount in manganese. These
could be manganese mines, if you really wanted to look at it
that way.
The Chairman. So what does that come out to as far as our
consumption?
Dr. Ziemkiewicz. Oh, that is about five to ten percent.
Yes. So it is not going to handle probably all of the rare
earth needs, but it would get the industry started, and then it
would provide that------
The Chairman. Is this the quickest way for us to get in the
business?
Dr. Ziemkiewicz. Pardon?
The Chairman. This is the quickest way for us to get in the
business?
Dr. Ziemkiewicz. Absolutely, because these are all
permitted sites. So they are all under Clean Water Act. They
are all under SMCRA permits.
The Chairman. How much money have you seen us direct toward
this?
Dr. Ziemkiewicz. Well, so far, my institute has gotten
something like $11 million from the Federal Government and
another $4 million from industry as cost share.
The Chairman. To prove the concept?
Dr. Ziemkiewicz. Yes.
The Chairman. But you have proven that now. You are going
from basically concept to commercial.
Dr. Ziemkiewicz. Correct. And so we will be producing mixed
rare earth oxides of about 99 percent purity. We have already
done this in the lab. We will be doing that out at our pilot
plant near Mount Storm by mid-summer this year.
The Chairman. Unbelievable. We need to take a field trip,
guys.
Next of all, I repeatedly said that we need to strengthen
our supply chains at home by increasing domestic production of
all energy minerals, which we have been talking about here. I
know it doesn't make sense to mine every single thing here, and
we can use what we already have. My thing, Dr. Fortier, if I
may say this, it matches up with the whole idea that a few of
us have been talking about, which is the North American Energy
Alliance and basically, we should be looking at North America
as one of the energy juggernauts of the world if we have a
seamless alliance between us and Canada, especially, and
hopefully to get Mexico in the fray.
How do you evaluate the supply risk of these allies as
opposed to somewhere like Russia or China, what we are into
right now?
Dr. Fortier. Thank you for that question, Senator Manchin.
That is a very important issue. We take into account the
ability and willingness of trade partners to supply in our
critical minerals screening methodology. And clearly, trade
with reliable trade partners makes it a lot safer and more
secure. We have actually published work on looking at net
import alliance through a North American trade block filter and
it markedly reduces our import reliance for commodities
basically across the board. We published a study in 2018 on
this. We are now in the process of updating that with our
Canadian counterparts in the Geological Society of Canada.
The Chairman. If I could, and Ms. Wulf, you might want to
chime in on this. Have we evaluated, basically, the amount of
critical minerals that we have in the North American continent
that could be accessed if we had this alliance?
Ms. Wulf. I am sure the U.S. Geological Survey, and Dr.
Fortier, yes, has calculated that amount. And I think that
working together with allies like Canada could be incredibly
strategic, especially in the short term for the United States.
They are building up all this infrastructure there. We could
pool resources. They also have a very heavy focus on this
midstream production that I mentioned in my remarks on battery
component production and on material----
The Chairman. We have total reliance right now. I didn't
know it was this critical that we have, with titanium and
palladium and also uranium from Russia. Have you looked at the
deposits we have in North America? Can we offset that?
Dr. Fortier. We do resource assessments of mineral
commodities across the board. We have looked at the Russia
issue and provided data and input to the Administration, to
Congress, and to other executive branch agencies. Because of
the sensitive nature of some of those discussions, we would
prefer to comment on that in a different setting.
The Chairman. We will definitely talk to you about that.
Dr. Fortier. Yes.
The Chairman. We could go to closed session and have you
come in and explain to us where the critical elements are and
what the risk is that we are running right now if we do not
jump into the game.
Dr. Fortier. Be happy to do that, Senator.
The Chairman. With that, I will turn to Senator Barrasso
for his questions.
Senator Barrasso. Well, thanks so much, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Melbye, in 2018, the Department of the Interior
included uranium on its list of critical minerals. You
mentioned in your testimony critical minerals and uranium. Last
month, the Department of the Interior reversed course and
decided to exclude uranium from its list of critical minerals.
The Department made the decision even though the same legal
definition of critical minerals applied. I also note that
between 2018 and 2021, the Departments of Energy and Commerce
identified uranium as a critical and an essential mineral. So
in your view, what happened?
Mr. Melbye. Senator, it is bewildering. I think uranium
meets the definition of critical mineral, perhaps, as well as
can be. I mean, you have national security implications. You
have energy security implications. We have fuel and non-fuel
uses, which obviously caused us to put uranium on this list in
2018, I think, at the urging of the Department of Defense, and
for it to be removed at a time when I think everyone in the
world is looking at nuclear energy and uranium as a strategic
commodity, I think we are just headed in the wrong direction
there because it does impact the permitting and licensing in
the infrastructure bill--I think it gave expedited permitting
and licensing to critical minerals. So it may mean the
difference between mines being brought into production in
months or a couple of years or several years or 10 years down
the road. So it really does have an impact on our national
security and energy security.
Senator Barrasso. Along those lines, let me follow up
because a few years ago, Westinghouse entered into an agreement
to fuel Ukraine's nuclear reactors. Now, these are Russian-
built reactors that are now using American fuel. So as we look
to wean Europe off of Russian energy, are there additional
opportunities for us in the United States and our companies to
provide fuel for Russian-built reactors around the world?
Mr. Melbye. Well, it is a very timely question. I just
returned from Prague last night where I was attending the U.S.
nuclear trade mission to the Czech Republic, along with U.S.
companies like Westinghouse, NuScale, and TerraPower, and we
had the privilege of being observers in a ministerial meeting
two days ago where the energy ministers from countries all the
way from the Baltics through Central Europe, all the way down
into Bulgaria and Greece, were meeting to discuss the
challenges that they are facing and cooperation that they can
engage in together and with the United States to help them make
their energy transition. They really face a dilemma because
they are largely dependent on coal-fired electricity in those
countries. The European Union is pushing them to transition
away from that, but at the same time, it puts their reliance on
natural gas from Russia.
So those Russian reactors that are operating, not just in
Ukraine, but in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, other
countries, Westinghouse took the step with Ukraine, even before
the invasion, to come up with fuel designs that Westinghouse
can make the fuel for Russian reactors. And that opens these
countries up to supplies from the West to stop their reliance
on Russia. But perhaps----
Senator Barrasso. I am going to need to move on with it.
Can you sum that up because I----
Mr. Melbye. Yes, well the most compelling argument was made
by the Deputy Energy Minister of Ukraine, Deputy Secretary
Demchenkov, who--nobody is impacted more than they are with
what is going on right now. He pleaded to the European
countries and the United States to stop the imports of Russian
uranium immediately, not three months or three years from now,
but immediately, given its impact on the war in Ukraine.
Senator Barrasso. Thank you.
Ms. Padilla, I would like to move to you on--there is a
chart that we are starting to hold up here. This depicts all of
the steps necessary to permit a mine on federal land in Nevada.
This is what you need. These are the steps to permitting a mine
on federal land in Nevada. It includes both federal and state
and local requirements. It is like a Gordian knot.
[The chart referred to follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Senator Barrasso. The orange boxes, they show the federal
permitting process. Green is the state requirements. Blue are
the local requirements. The orange boxes appear throughout the
entire process. On average, it takes 10 years to permit a mine
in the United States. Contrast the average time it takes to
permit a mine in Canada and Australia--both of which have high
environmental standards, high safety standards--which is two to
three years.
Now, is it fair to say this overly complex and long
permitting process is actually the single largest roadblock to
additional mineral production in the United States?
Ms. Padilla. Thank you, Senator. That is a terrific
question. I would start by adding that there are no spots on
this chart that show the many times you have to go back to the
beginning and start over, at least for projects like ours and
the many places where arbitrary decisions can come into play
that shift the dynamic of this chart.
This is a challenge for every project in this country. It
highlights how and where we can get stuck to create that 10-
year timeline or longer. I definitely agree that we need better
coordination both between the state and federal agencies, as
well as guardrails around the permitting and NEPA process to
ensure that they are done fairly and with regulatory certainty
within a period of time.
Senator Barrasso. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Maybe we could give this to Senator King for his birthday
present for today?
[Laughter.]
The Chairman. You know, today is Senator King's birthday.
Happy Birthday, Senator. We are not going to sing because
nobody out here can do it.
Senator King. Today is also Patrick Leahy's birthday, and I
made a calculation this morning that the two of us together go
back to the Lincoln Administration.
[Laughter.]
Senator King. That is a fact.
Senator Heinrich. That is very appropriate because our
mining law was written when Ulysses S. Grant was President.
[Laughter.]
The Chairman. No, the hardrock mining law.
Senator Heinrich. Exactly, and I will get to that. Thank
you, Chairman.
The Chairman. Senator Heinrich.
Senator Heinrich. You know, as I sit here listening to the
need to streamline our mining laws, I cannot help but think of
the tens of thousands of abandoned hardrock mines that still
are strewn across watersheds in states like mine, and I want to
show you the flip side of this, which is just a few years back,
when an accident occurred on the Animas River, and the Animas
drains into the San Juan River. It is the source of irrigation
and drinking water and recreation for thousands of folks. This
photo, that is the current President of the Navajo Nation
there.
[The photo referred to follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Senator Heinrich. Their irrigators were particularly
impacted. When you get it wrong--I would just ask you, would
you want to drink that water? Would you want to irrigate with
that water? There's an enormous amount of heavy metals that get
released.
The Chairman. A blowout.
Senator Heinrich. Yes, that was a blowout.
So as I said, the mining law we are talking about was
developed and written in 1872. There were only 37 states in the
Union at that time. Most of us on this Committee actually
represent states that were still territories. I do. In fact, my
State is 40 years younger than the mining law.
So as we sit here talking about how to open new mines, mine
pollution is still leaking into streams and rivers across the
West. It kills fish and it renders water unfit for drinking and
irrigation. Most of us in the West are highly water-dependent,
and we just do not have the quantities of water that people in
the East take for granted.
With regard to uranium, and we were a major uranium
producer, uranium mining milling sites still leech radioactive
waste into our groundwater in New Mexico, and in fact, some of
my constituents from Laguna Pueblo live just down the road from
what was the world's largest open-pit uranium mine. It is still
barely reclaimed. Water samples taken by the EPA from a nearby
stream just last year show uranium levels 16 times higher than
the safe level. We simply cannot continue to use a permissive
law written 150 years ago to govern how companies develop
minerals on public land. So if we want a modern mining permit
process, I think it is fair to say we also need a modern mining
law. We need a royalty to capture fair value for the taxpayers,
as these are public resources. We need a reclamation fee. We
need a process to protect the places that just are not
appropriate for development, whether that is the headwaters of
the Pecos or the watershed around the boundary waters. And
above all, what we really need is dedicated funding to clean up
abandoned mines so that accidents like this--and this is not an
anomaly in my state--we have had multiple accidents on the
Animas, which also impacted Colorado. I remember the first time
I ever talked to Governor Hickenlooper was as a result of this
spill. We have had it happen on the Pecos. The Red River is
still recovering from the impacts to the Red River.
So, as the Chairman can attest, and he alluded to this a
few minutes ago, all these things are already in place for coal
development, for oil and gas development. Hardrock mines are
the only industrial use allowed on our public lands that have
none of these public safeguards in place. So mining has been
good to me. My father did exploration for Anaconda Copper. My
grandfather mined at Battle Mountain for gold. And I agree that
we need new sources of minerals that are necessary for all of
these technologies, but I do not think we will get them with
the same old mining law because local communities will not give
them the social license until they know that their water is
safe. So I would just make the case that if you want a better
mining permit process, let's also write a better mining law.
Now, with that, I wanted to ask you, Ms. Padilla, is the
Twin Metals mine in the same watershed as the Boundary Waters
Canoe Area Wilderness?
Ms. Padilla. The project is located, Senator, within the
Rainy River Watershed.
Senator Heinrich. Yes, which is the same watershed. Is it
above or below the Boundary Waters?
Ms. Padilla. It is south of Boundary Waters.
Senator Heinrich. Which puts it above it in the watershed,
correct?
Ms. Padilla. We--the mine projects, the hydrology is really
interesting in the area. So we are about 20 river miles away
from the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, and our
hydrology connects to about one percent of the lakes within the
Boundary Waters.
Senator Heinrich. When the Minneapolis Star Tribune asked
you if there was zero risk to the Boundary Waters as a result,
what they reported, and please correct it if it is incorrect,
is that you said that is not a fair question.
Is that accurate? And if it is accurate, why would it not
be a fair question?
Ms. Padilla. Yes, it was a much more nuanced response than
what was printed in the paper, Senator. It is a good question.
I mean, these are industrial activities. Every human activity
involves risk. And so I think when we ask simple questions and
expect a simple answer, that is a problem. When I get into a
car, I choose whether to put on a seatbelt. I choose whether to
take that risk, and there are laws in place to determine
whether I should do that or not. So when we are talking about,
you know, whether an industrial project has any risk of
impacting anything, certainly we have that risk, but what----
Senator Heinrich. Let me--this will all wrap this up.
Ms. Padilla. Yes.
Senator Heinrich. Mr. Chair, because I have taken a lot of
time here, but Dr. Z., I know you are an expert on acid mine
drainage. This kind of underground mining in a wet environment
above a place like the Boundary Waters in a watershed, is that
risky, and is that different than dry mining?
Dr. Ziemkiewicz. Well, by definition it will be wet enough
to generate acid mine drainage. So unless you put a plastic
cover over all of the potentially acid-producing rock on the
site, it will produce some acid, yes.
Senator Heinrich. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you.
I would like to take a personal privilege here of
introducing Senator Glenn Jeffries from West Virginia. He is a
State Senator who I have worked with very closely, he does a
great job, and he has been very supportive of these programs.
He is pushing in the state, too, and thanks, Glenn, for being
here. Appreciate you, buddy.
Okay, and now we have Senator Lee.
Senator Lee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks to all of you
for being here.
Mr. Melbye, I would like to start with you, if that is
okay. I am worried about our domestic reliance on imported
uranium, specifically and especially Russian imported uranium.
I think this poses a significant strategic risk to the United
States. I also worry that the recent decision by the Biden
Administration to remove uranium from its critical minerals
list is something that could have very real, harmful, lasting
consequences.
Mr. Melbye, what kind of consequences do you think we ought
to anticipate as a result of that short-sighted decision by the
U.S. Geological Survey?
Mr. Melbye. Yes, well, you know, uranium is the source of
fuel for our largest source of carbon-free energy, over 55
percent of our carbon-free energy, 20 percent of our
electricity. It is also the fuel for our naval reactors and our
100-plus reactors and more than 80 aircraft carriers and
submarines. So I think we have become a little lackadaisical
about the supply of uranium. I think on the commercial side of
nuclear energy, I think it was more of a commercial preference
to just diversify and purchase uranium from Russia and
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan. It wasn't an imperative. We have over a
billion pounds of known and likely resources in the United
States. We have the highest environmental standards--health,
safety, and environment. The injustices that occurred in New
Mexico in the 1950s as part of the weapons program and the
government's obligation, they need to address those because
they were injustices and they bear no resemblance to the mining
industry that we have today.
We have 21st century standards of technologies, health,
safety, environment. So we have to pay attention to our uranium
industry. Countries like Russia and China are taking--they are
playing the long game. They are acquiring resources all around
the world--places like Namibia in Africa, and you know, we are
fortunate we have abundant resources here in the United States
and Canada. So we should make the best use of that and we have
the ability to do that.
Senator Lee. We have the ability, and notwithstanding that
ability, we have chosen to put ourselves in a position in which
we are taking upwards of 46 percent of uranium consumed in
America from Russia and its close affiliates. Does that strike
you, and should it strike me, as us putting ourselves in a
position very analogous to that of Germany relying on a supply
of Russian natural gas?
Mr. Melbye. Yes, I mean, Germany put themselves in their
position with the energy policies that they took and it has
caused them to be over-reliant on Russian gas, but you know, we
have done the same thing here in nuclear energy with uranium
from Russia, but we do not have to. It was a commercial
preference, not a supply imperative. So it will be easy for us.
It won't be painless, and it won't be without some cost, but we
need to stand up western industries as quickly as we can to get
ourselves off of Russian uranium.
Senator Lee. Dr. Fortier, in determining whether a mineral
should be listed as critical, the USGS creates an ability-to-
supply index. It is known as the ASI. The data supplied for the
USGS's ability-to-supply index comes from the Frasier
Institute's Policy Perception Index, and that is an index that
assesses political stability, security, and other factors.
Here's the rub. The Frasier Institute concludes--to say it
concludes absurdly is a vast understatement--but it listed
Russia right above Utah in terms of its investment
attractiveness. You know, if you look closely, however, you
will see that this ranking was made only on the basis of
somewhere between five and nine voluntary responses to their
survey.
Dr. Fortier, do you think that between five and nine
unreported responses to a survey provide a sufficient
qualitative basis for determining the likelihood for critical
mineral supply disruption?
Dr. Fortier. Thanks for that question, Senator Lee.
Certainly, there are data limitations in any kind of
modeling effort. We use whatever data we have available to us
and whatever best data are available to us, but we really do
not control how those data are produced. We have to use what is
available.
Senator Lee. Right. What is available here strikes me as
problematic, and there are external manifestations of this.
According to the five to nine responses that the Frasier
Institute received, Russia scored above 60 percent in terms of
political stability of the sort encouraging investment. Again,
that was above my home State of Utah, but it wasn't just Utah.
It was also Montana and Washington and Minnesota and Colorado
and other states, many of which are represented here on this
Committee. Would you agree with this assessment that Utah and
the other states I have mentioned are less politically stable
than Russia?
Dr. Fortier. Senator, I think it is important to
distinguish what we have done and what we have not done. We are
not disputing the facts about uranium supply and demand.
Senator Lee. I am not suggesting you are disputing them. I
am disputing your characterization that my state is somehow
less politically stable than Russia.
Dr. Fortier. And that is certainly not a position we are
taking. We removed uranium from the critical minerals list
because the definition of a critical mineral in the Energy Act
of 2020 changed. That's why. It has nothing to do with whether
uranium meets the criteria that are otherwise stated in that
definition, but the definition, which had language inserted
specifically excluding fuel minerals from consideration, is
what we are responding to.
Senator Lee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I see my time is
expired.
The Chairman. I feel like you might be around for the
second round.
[Laughter.]
The Chairman. Senator Heinrich.
Senator Heinrich. Yes, I just wanted to quickly point out
that the industry and the mine that I referenced operated long
after the government's nuclear program and operated in the
private sector supplying the energy industry.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
Senator King. The birthday boy.
Senator King. Yes, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
One of my favorite sayings of Mark Twain is that, ``History
doesn't always repeat itself, but it usually rhymes.'' And in
this case, I am thinking back to the predecessor in my Senate
seat, Edmund Muskie of Maine, who wrote the Clean Water Act.
And the Clean Water Act passed in 1970 after immense effort by
Senator Muskie, unanimously. Can you imagine? The Clean Water
Act passed the U.S. Senate unanimously. And it seems to me that
what we are talking about today is a solvable problem. We need
these minerals. We need to cut off our dependency on other
countries that are unreliable or even hostile. To me, that is
just common sense. We also need to protect our watersheds and
our rivers and our natural resources and our communities.
This is an engineering problem. And I have worked in energy
permitting. I have been an advocate for development over my
life, in fact, next year marks the 40th year since I went into
the alternative energy business. What I said when I was
Governor of Maine is, I want the strongest, most far-reaching
environmental laws in the country and the most timely and
predictable permitting process. I do not think the permitting
process itself should be used as a weapon to stop a project.
But I agree, I find myself in the unusual position of agreeing
with Senator Barrasso. By the way, I think that is one of the
most effective uses of visual data that I have ever seen, and
it really does make an important point. We have to have one-
stop permitting. We have to have coordination between the State
and the Federal Government. This does not mean lowering the
standards. It doesn't mean skipping steps. It doesn't mean
avoiding difficult issues.
But, Ms. Wulf, am I on the right track here? I mean, it
just seems to me this is in the nature of a scientific and an
engineering problem, and we should be able to solve it so that
we can permit necessary projects for national security within a
reasonable period of time.
Ms. Wulf. I couldn't agree with you more, Senator King. And
thank you for your work and your interest on this issue. I was
so, like, wow, when you held up that chart earlier, but I
really do think that our regulatory regime is really one of our
greatest strengths as well. We want to make sure that the
energy transition is responsible and clean, and we do think
that doing that within the United States and among like-minded
nations will help to achieve that. As you mention, the
technology is rapidly advancing and we are able to do things
much more cleanly than we have in the past. But what we also
need to recognize is that we need much more robust and
meaningful community participation on the front-end as well to
help make sure that we can communicate to people.
That is partly what I am trying to do here today is that we
really do need these things. It should be a bipartisan issue.
And so, as humans, you know, nothing that we do is zero-impact.
So how can we make sure that we can have as responsible of an
impact as possible? And I think that, you know, it is not
cutting corners. Streamlining the permitting process is
required but, you know, maintaining these high standards that
we have in the United States and trying to figure out just how
virtuous are we, and are there any loopholes, and can we
improve, is important.
Senator King. Well, I think that you used the phrase
``nothing we do is zero-impact,'' and I think you used that
phrase as well, and that is important. One thing I have learned
in energy over 40 years is, there's no free lunch. Everything
has a cost and an impact, and if you want wind power, you are
going to have to look at them on top of the ridges, and if you
want solar, a lot of farm fields are going to disappear, and
you are going to have to have the minerals, and either the
choice is we import them from possibly hostile countries or we
develop them ourselves. I think the Chairman is absolutely
right, within North America, from friendly countries, we can
develop a supply chain. We do not have to be entirely dependent
on indigenous resources.
But we have to recognize--the environmental community has
to recognize--if they want electrification, they have to
understand that the materials necessary to make that a
possibility are going to have--there are going to be impacts.
And the question is, how do we minimize them, protect against
them, and develop a rational permitting system, where the
system itself doesn't become an impediment to the development
of--the word is critical--resources.
Ms. Wulf. I agree. I think that they need to be thought of
as clean-energy land uses.
Senator King. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
Now we have Senator--is Senator Daines here? Senator Daines
is here.
Senator Daines. I am behind the stack of paper, Mr.
Chairman.
The Chairman. Oh, you should have seen it before.
Senator Daines. Well, we all have our horror stories. I am
going to unpack this one from Montana. First of all, behind me
is the permitting timeline for the Rock Creek Mine located in
the northwestern part of Montana in Sanders County.
[The timeline referred to follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Senator King. Is that like creek?
Senator Daines. It is creek [pronounced ``crick''] in
Montana. There, Chairman King, there.
So this started in 1987. This is a lather, rinse, repeat
cycle. You can see what happens here. We go through the
permitting process, the draft EIS, the permits get finished,
then we have the legal challenge. This started in 1987. By the
way, this 2022 here. They finished it again. Legally
challenged. This is 35 years, and this is so far the
environmental reports that have been generated.
[Front pages of ten environmental reports follow:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Senator Daines. In 1987, when this process started, Ronald
Reagan was President. In fact, that was the year he stood
before the Brandenburg gate and said ``Mr. Gorbachev, tear down
this wall.'' I would kindly submit, please, to the courts,
please tear down this wall and allow us to move forward with a
mine after some 35 years of court battles and regulatory
battles, doing it the right way, in a state, by the way, in a
corner of my state that has one of the highest poverty levels
in Montana. In fact, I met with a couple up there several years
ago. We were talking about the loss of their natural resources,
the loss of their timber industry, and they sadly said,
``Senator, what we have here in this beautiful part of Montana
is poverty with a view.''
So there is a lot at stake here about the economic
activity, the tax revenues to save these counties that are
losing their population because there is no work, there is no
tax base, not to mention, we have got an ability here to
generate more made-in-America minerals. Let me put that in
perspective. This permitting process has been ongoing for seven
presidents. We have had nine presidential elections since the
mine was originally proposed. This is unacceptable. I wish we
could bring the folks from the county here that could plead
before this body of Democrats and Republicans, and ask when is
this nightmare, frankly, going to end. I will tell you who is
making a lot of money, it is the lawyers who are making the
most money on this, and probably some consultants. With every
new permit comes more frivolous litigation from anti-mining
groups. Their philosophy is to leave it in the ground.
On one hand, we have the Biden Administration trying to
block permitting of new oil and gas leases on federal lands. At
the same time, you have these woke green groups trying to block
domestic mining of the materials and the metals that are needed
for renewable energy development. So what are we left with?
Under President Biden and these far-left environmental groups
and woke judges, we cannot produce traditional energy on
federal lands, and we also cannot mine the materials needed to
produce renewable energy. And I am not opposed to renewables.
Let's think of renewables as additive to our portfolio as this
transition occurs, not replacing. And if there is one case
study to be made, it is look at what happened to Europe, and
the position they have put themselves in. We cannot let America
get to that point.
Increasing domestic mining, like the Rock Creek Mine, will
help bolster energy security. It is going to help our local
communities. It is going to help people. The Forest Service
predicted that this mine would result in 600 Montana jobs. It
would be a stable economic driver in the county for more than
30 years. It is virtually a generation. This is an area that
desperately needs these jobs and revenue. We are dangerously
dependent on China for the minerals and the metals that run our
economy and our national defense. In fact, of the 50 critical
minerals, 31 are imported from China. This never-ending cycle
of permitting and litigation must stop if we ever plan to
reduce our dependence on China and foreign adversaries for
minerals and metals. Over the years, we have seen China
increasing mining and the United States becoming more dependent
on imports. In 1995, the United States was 100 percent import-
reliant on eight minerals. In 2021, that just increased to 17.
It is a disturbing trend for the sake of our kids and our
grandkids and the security of this nation that is being fueled
by lengthy permitting and constant litigation from green
groups.
Mr. Melbye, can you discuss the impacts of litigation on
developing new mines and how this puts the U.S. at a
disadvantage to countries like China and Russia?
Mr. Melbye. Yes, Senator. Again, anyone who has been in
mining in the United States has an experience like you have
shown, very explicitly with the stack of documents. Again, I
just want to remind everyone that the United States has the
most robust, thorough permitting and licensing process--modern
mining in 2022. Understandably, and we accept being put through
strong regulatory steps to bring a mine into production, but we
just want it predictable, and we want it transparent, and if
you meet all the steps, you should be granted the license to
mine.
I mean, our most successful track record, I think, was
permitting a mine in the State of Wyoming in just over six
years, and that was a huge success. But we didn't face, you
know, much opposition to the mine in the form of legal
challenges. But we find that a lot of those challenges, too,
ignore the local communities, whether it is northern Minnesota
or it is South Texas or it is the Powder River Basin of
Wyoming, these are people's real lives here. They are not some
esoteric argument about mining or not mining. If we do not do
it here, it is going to be undertaken in places like the Congo
or in Africa or South America where they do not share our
values for the environment and for tribal peoples. We have
protections for all of those things in our current regulatory
structure in the United States and we just need to enforce
those and streamline them as much as we can.
Senator Daines. Thank you. I am over my time, but everybody
I have spoken to involving these operations, they want to
comply with the regulations. They want to do it the right way.
The modern mining practices do it the right way. We are better
off doing it here in America in terms of global stewardship
than outside of our borders. And by the way, the difference
here between perhaps Montana and other countries is--welcome to
the Ninth Circuit Court, but thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
Senator Wyden.
Senator Wyden. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. There's
lots going on here.
The Chairman. You have missed a good show so far.
Senator Wyden. Many of the technologies that are going to
move us to the next generation of clean energy products rely on
critical minerals, so it is essential to start building the
supply here at home and reduce our country's dependence on
foreign-produced minerals, and in turn, wean ourselves off of
foreign energy, and reducing that dependence on foreign
minerals and energy is as much a national security issue as it
is an environmental question.
So toward this end, I recently introduced S. 3783, my
American Energy Development and Growth Enhancement Act, which
would expand access to critical minerals here in the United
States and create what I think are clearly good-paying, red,
white, and blue jobs. The bill does not deal with mining
leases, but would provide opportunities to expand the
processing and manufacturing of critical minerals and aid the
cleanup of existing mining sites. And folks, we can do this. We
can tap these extraordinary domestic resources without throwing
the environmental values we feel strongly about in the trash
can.
So what I would like to do is just get you, Ms. Wulf, on
the record on this point. You mentioned we all understand the
need for critical minerals and dealing with supply chains here
in our country. That is what the EDGE Act does. What are your
thoughts on this, and what would increased access to domestic
critical mineral supplies and support for processing to
companies that care about innovation--as you do, as I do, I
think our colleagues all do--that produce cutting-edge battery
and clean energy technologies?
Ms. Wulf. Thank you so much, Senator Wyden, and thank you
so much for your work on the bill, which we very much support.
So as you say, this race for the future is not just a race
to control the raw materials, it is really a race to control
the innovation, expertise, and intellectual property that comes
along with the downstream industries that flow from our ability
to have secure access to those material resources. It doesn't
really matter where you dig something up at this point because
it all has to get sent to China to be processed anyway. But
additionally, if we only focus on building up processing
facilities, we need to be thinking about what are we
processing, and also, once we have processed the material, who
are we selling that stuff to?
There is no silver bullet right now. We have to be focusing
on the entirety of the supply chain to make sure that these
renewable energy industries and high-technology innovation
industries, and our auto sector are not hollowed out. Right
now, even if we have processing, we are not making the battery
components--those anodes and cathodes--as I mentioned in my
remarks. You would have to send that processed material to
China to be processed, to be made into those battery
components. So it is this vital midstream, Senator Wyden, and
thank you for the question.
Senator Wyden. Well, thank you. I appreciate the support
for our EDGE Act. And I would just say, colleagues, I think,
and Senator Manchin and I talk about this issue--all of us do--
I think that this effort with respect to domestic focus on
minerals is a good complement to the Clean Energy for America
Act. You know, the Clean Energy for America Act, colleagues, we
basically took the tax code as it relates to energy and threw
it in the trash can. And what we said going forward is, we are
going to have a technology-neutral approach and then we are
going to say, for the first time, the more you reduce carbon
emissions, the bigger your tax savings.
So we are all in here in terms of trying to tap these kinds
of opportunities. That is what a technology-neutral approach is
all about. That is what the effort in terms of freeing ourself
from this dependence on foreign sources of minerals is all
about. I support the kind of ideas that are being offered
today, in this Committee, and this is priority business. And if
anything, what the conflict in Ukraine has highlighted is the
urgency of this, you know, shaking free of this dependence on
foreign supplies, in particular, is critical, and in so many
instances, I am running back to the Finance Committee. We see
people going the other way. Mexico is walking back, right now,
its commitments to renewable energy. So we have a lot of work
to do. I look forward to working with all of you and our
colleagues here in the Energy Committee on both sides of the
aisle.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
Now we have Senator Lankford.
Senator Lankford. Senator Manchin, thank you. The
witnesses, thank you very much for being here. This is an
incredibly important conversation. It is interesting as we go
back and forth across the dais here that there is this
perception that Republicans are all trying to get rid of all
permitting and just rape the land and strip it, and Democrats
are trying to be able to protect everything. I do not think
that is really where anyone is on this, on either side of it--
reasonable permitting process. We all live in these areas.
Senator Heinrich, you were talking about some of the
challenges there. Picher, Oklahoma, is considered the most
toxic place in America. It was a lead mine for 100 years. It is
still the largest Superfund site, and literally, we have had to
evacuate everyone from the entire town. It is a ghost town now.
All buildings are there. Everyone has pulled up as we try to
deal with it. The way we used to do mining was terrible. It was
expedient. It destroyed the environment around it. No one wants
to go back to that. Nobody. But we have to figure out how to be
able to do this. When I talk to mining companies, I am
interested to hear with some of your insight today, and with
Senator Daines' comment, it is always about why would you do
mining? Why would you even try it now? When you go through the
whole long process, but at the end of it, someone can sue you
and it just delays everything out and it ends up never being
answered.
If there is a small group that does not want any mining at
all there, regardless of what the national need is, how do you
get around that and how do you deal with it? And so there are
major issues that we have to address that are hard questions.
How do we make sure that we actually do this environmentally
friendly? But how do we make sure we actually get projects
done? And we have the private sector, otherwise, every project
is going to have to be a federal project, and we all know what
that is going to mean with 12,000-plus mines that are actually
happening in America right now, and a lot of them are doing it
extremely well. So we have to be able to figure out how to be
able to balance this out.
Dr. Fortier, I want to ask you about the mapping. You
talked about the Earth mapping--the Earth MRI. I love the name
of it, by the way. There was a time period when this was all
moving, and we had actually mapped more of Afghanistan than we
had of the United States. I would assume we are caught up on
that. Where are we? When will this project be done?
Dr. Fortier. Yes, thank you, Senator.
The Earth MRI project is, I think, a fundamentally
important initiative, and we are very appreciative of the----
Senator Lankford. So when will it be done?
Dr. Fortier. I do not think I can give you an end date, but
what I can say without fear of contradiction is that the money
that has been injected by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law
will vastly accelerate that process.
Senator Lankford. Is that 20 years? Is that five years?
When will that be done?
Dr. Fortier. I do not know the answer to that. I can
perhaps get one of our people that run that project to give you
a better idea what the timeline is.
Senator Lankford. Great.
Dr. Fortier. But I would not hazard a guess. It is a big
initiative.
Senator Lankford. It is a big initiative----
Dr. Fortier. And it is accelerating with the influx of
funding.
Senator Lankford. So I have a question that has been
brought to me before, and that is about processing minerals. We
really talk a lot about the mining, but the processing part is
another whole step, and that is very significant. Obviously,
there are environmental challenges around the processing, as
well as around the mining. Both can be handled well. There is a
question that has been brought to me before of, can we do the
processing on a brownfield site? So there are unique
challenges, obviously, working in a brownfield site, and
already with environmental challenges there, but are there ways
to be able to move the processing to a location that is a
brownfield site already and to say while we are working on the
other environmental issues that are here already, we also have
something else that we are trying to be able to manage as well?
Is that faster or slower to do that? And I am not going to
ask either of you to commit to it, but initial impression, Ms.
Padilla, your initial impression on that.
Ms. Padilla. Thank you, Senator.
I think we need to look at all of these options because
siting facilities like that is difficult.
Senator Lankford. Right.
Ms. Padilla. So processing facilities by themselves, if you
are utilizing a site that has already been heavily
industrialized, you are likely going to have an easier time
through permitting.
Senator Lankford. Right.
Mr. Melbye, what do you think?
Mr. Melbye. Yes, and one of the advantages of the uranium
fuel cycle is the energy density of uranium. We do not have a
proliferation of a lot of mines and a lot of processing
facilities, but clearly, it is easier to expand on a site that
already has the community acceptance and everything going
forward. So yes, it is an easier path forward, but we still
have to go through the steps.
Senator Lankford. Right. There are still lots of steps to
go through. We are just trying to be able to find--we have to
get practical solutions in this process of how do we actually
do some of these things. And I think what I am throwing out is,
is this even an option, something that we should consider to be
able to walk through this?
I am going to stick to Joe Manchin's term of Dr. Z., and be
able to go from there.
Yes, so my question to you is, in Oklahoma and multiple
other states that are doing oil and gas development, they have
produced water that is coming out. The produced water that is
coming out in multiple layers--they have found lithium in it.
Have you done experimentation and research on the issue about
produced water coming out of oil and gas wells and actually
producing lithium? Are any of you tracking that as research?
Dr. Ziemkiewicz. Yes, yes, Senator. We have a project with
the Department of Energy where we are looking at the produced
water coming out of the Marcellus and Utica unconventional
formations. We have looked at lithium, and we generally find
the concentrations between 80 and 120 milligrams per liter.
There are a lot of other things in the matrix, but I just
talked the other day to a developer of a lithium brine
development project in California, and we were comparing notes
on the water quality, and it is not that much different in
terms of being a sodium chloride dominated water. Being able to
extract the lithium from that, we did not find at current
prices--and we did this study a couple years ago--that it was
cost effective. When I talked to the brine developer in
California, he told me that they like 200 to 400 milligrams per
liter, which is about twice what we are getting.
So to answer your question briefly.
Senator Lankford. Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman,
thanks.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Senator Cantwell.
Senator Cantwell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you
and Ranking Member Barrasso for holding this hearing. I think
it is fair to say the Committee has been ahead of the curve in
recognizing the importance of critical minerals to our economy,
to national security, and to our energy future. The Committee
has done some good work stemming from Senator Murkowski and I
collaborating early on an energy package, all the way to the
most recent infrastructure bill. But clearly, we need to do
more faster, and we need to do more innovation. One of the
issues that we are working on is the innovation bill. My
colleague--House Energy and Commerce colleague--Cathy McMorris
Rodgers, has made it clear she would like to see a critical
minerals element in the package.
So I think when you think about critical minerals, it is
important for our R&D, for various technologies in clean energy
specifically--lots of the products and services in clean energy
will require these critical minerals. So I hope that we can
leverage our expertise at our DOE labs and work toward these
issues. Becoming less reliant on global critical minerals will
really, I think, require some out-of-the-box thinking. Chairman
Manchin has highlighted the possibility of extracting critical
minerals from coal ash. One example from my state, on a tour of
the Pacific Northwest Laboratory Marine Science Lab in Sequim,
I was told there was promising research in developing new
approaches to extract critical minerals from sea water. So I
think that included elements such as uranium, lithium, and
cobalt--so something I hope that our labs can take a look at.
So I wanted to ask you, Ms. Wulf, the traditional critical
mineral, you know--extraction--I do not believe that is going
to be enough to get us to end our dependence on China's imports
and rapidly scale-up renewables and EVs. Can you share some
thoughts on innovative ways that we should be looking at
critical minerals here at home?
Ms. Wulf. Absolutely, Senator Cantwell, and thank you very
much for the question because I think that is an important one.
In the United States, one of our greatest strengths is our
innovation, and what we have right now is a relatively older
industry, really bashing heads with brand-new, cutting-edge
technology. It is sort of an interesting culture clash, I
think. We do not want to just be trying to catch up with China
in this regard. We need to find out a way to leapfrog them, and
I think that, again, our innovation base is the way to do that.
In particular, I think that we need to work with our national
labs and to partner with industry to figure out more innovative
ways to make mineral processing faster, cheaper, and cleaner
outside of China--so within the United States and among like-
minded nations.
Right now, you know, their processes are very traditional.
We have some very forward-thinking mineral processors here in
the United States. One, Urbix, in Arizona, is doing clean
graphite processing in a light industrial zone in Mesa,
Arizona, which is fairly fascinating. They are not associated
with one single mine, so following that China angle, I think
that is something that we should be investing in and doing more
of here.
Senator Cantwell. Okay, and I noticed the President has
made it an Executive Order here, so the resources could be
flowing as well. So what particular areas or minerals do you
think we should focus on in the innovation side that would be
most helpful?
Ms. Wulf. In the innovation side--and thank you again for
the question--so at SAFE, we are particularly interested in the
battery metals, but also, you know, we want to make sure as
technologies rapidly change and the flavors of batteries
rapidly change, that we have the holistic frameworks in place
so that we are not just focusing on a couple of key minerals at
one time that could, you know, in the next 10 years, not really
be the dominant flavors, or, you know--chemistries, to be more
formal--in the future. So having those frameworks in place will
be really important, but in the near-term, 10 to 15 years for
light duty vehicles, we need those lithium-ion battery
chemistry minerals.
Senator Cantwell. Well, I think this is one of the reasons
why just supply chain money in general, again, wearing a
different hat for the commerce side of USICA, is about
identifying in critical areas of U.S. industry what are the
supply chain needs. And so to me, getting that identified so
that, as you say, we are not, you know, just doing a one-off
today, but looking at the complexity of the whole system.
So thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. We now have Senator Murkowski.
Senator Murkowski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I really appreciate this hearing this morning. As has been
mentioned, just most directly by Senator Cantwell, this
Committee has been looking at this issue and this vulnerability
for a long, long time now, and it is good. It feels like
everybody else is kind of waking up to our reality that we have
been raising the alarm or pounding the drum, and it seems like
it just kind of echoes in this room and doesn't go beyond here.
So it is important that we are aware and are focusing on it,
and hopefully in a strong and a significant way.
We talk about this transition, whether it is to electric
vehicles, but if things are trending in the way that we see
them trending now, the costs that we will see, as we try to
develop new technologies, as we try to build out, for instance,
the electric vehicle fleet, where we are looking at projections
now that the cost of an average EV could rise by a thousand
dollars just because of the nickel prices. Batteries could cost
25 percent more because of the increase in lithium carbonate
prices. So people are getting the message. They say I want to
go to an electric vehicle, and then they look at it and say,
you know, how am I going to do this? Why are they doing this?
Who is to blame?
Well, you used a terminology, Ms. Wulf, that I really
appreciated. You said we can talk about acts of nature, that is
where the resources are. We think that God has blessed us with
a lot of that in Alaska, but the active policy is what is
inhibiting our ability to really do more and be more of a
producer in this area. We have laid strong fundamentals through
this Committee with everything, beginning from the Energy Act
of 2020, which Dr. Fortier, you have mentioned, the American
Minerals Security Act that Senator Manchin and I worked on, the
REACT Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure bill that puts funding
to the authorization. We are doing all of this right, and I
think that that is important, but then we have these
inconsistencies with policy that just make no sense.
In February, on the very same day that the President touted
his progress on critical minerals--the very same day--
Department of the Interior pauses and suspends the right-of-way
for the Ambler Access project. This is not even for a mine,
mind you. This is a 200-mile-plus, controlled access industrial
road to provide access to this mineral district. It is about a
75-mile mineral belt, considered one of the world's largest
undeveloped copper and zinc mineral belts. Well, if you cannot
get there, the resource is going to continue to sit there. I
think we recognize that. From that stack of paperwork that
Senator Daines cited, to that lengthy schematic about how long
it takes to process a mine, we cannot even get to the beginning
of starting a 10-year process because we cannot get to it. So
it is these inconsistencies and the conflict between where the
resource is, that act of nature and the act of policy. Well, we
can control the policy side, and I think this is where we need
to help move this forward.
I want to ask a question to you, Dr. Fortier, about
graphite. We have not produced it in the U.S. at any
significant scale since the 1950s. We are now 100 percent
dependent on imports for natural graphite--70 percent of those
imports come from China. But we also know that both natural
graphite, which Alaska has--we have a significant project,
Graphite One, but synthetic graphite, which states like West
Virginia and Wyoming can produce, are both needed for the
production of anodes for lithium-ion batteries. Ms. Wulf, maybe
this is better directed to you, but in terms of rechargeable
batteries and energy storage, are there applications that
require all-natural graphite or all-synthetic graphite, or is
it always a mix, because I have been told, no, no, no, do not
worry about the natural graphite, we'll be able to produce
synthetic, so we do not need it. Walk me through that.
Ms. Wulf. Thank you very much for the question, Senator
Murkowski, and thank you very much to you and Senator Cantwell
for your dedicated work on this issue for a very long time.
On battery chemistries, I might admit, I just know a bit to
be dangerous, so I am happy to get back to you on that
question. But I believe the answer is it can be both.
Senator Murkowski. But, perhaps more broadly, wouldn't you
agree that if we are going to talk about really improving our
mineral security, especially for battery minerals, we have to
have domestic production of graphite--natural graphite and
synthetic graphite?
Ms. Wulf. I certainly agree that domestic production will
have to be a part of our equation when we are talking about
national and economic security. I like to think of this issue
in the short-term and long-term terms. In the short term, yes,
we see that we have a lot of these hurdles and we want to make
sure that we do things correctly here because, again, I think
we see that as our strength. I think that we can work with our
allies in the short-term to get the things that we need to
process it here, to build the battery components and other
things here to get that downstream IP. But then also, I think
that it does make sense to also have enough of a material here
to insulate ourselves from any supply shocks that we might
have.
Senator Murkowski. So Mr. Chairman, we haven't talked as
much about the processing side of this as I think is required
for this. We are talking about where it is coming from. USGS is
working on the mapping. We appreciate that, but when you think
about the one processing facility that we are talking about
here in Mountain Pass, DOD has just given a grant to help build
that out. It kind of disturbs me to know that there is a
Chinese interest there. I mean, it is not big, but eight
percent or thereabouts is something that--I thought we were a
little worried about that. I worry. I worry about the fact that
we might have the resources here. We might be able to get
around the lengthy permitting process and still be in a
situation where we have to send it to China and then ask
politely for them to send it back to us.
So I would hope that we would have additional time here in
this Committee to talk about that aspect of how we get the
stuff. We cannot take the rock and put it in the Tesla. I like
the way you translated it for ``minerals for dummies'' here.
Ms. Wulf. Thank you.
Senator Kelly [presiding]. Senator Hickenlooper.
Senator Hickenlooper. Let me just say that I, as a
recovering geologist, enjoy this panel more than any, and as a
volcanologist, almost all the critical minerals and rare earth
elements, in some way, go back to a volcanic past.
Let me start with Dr. Fortier, and anybody connected with
the U.S. Geological Survey, you get my immediate acceptance,
not to say you cannot lose it, but immediate acceptance. I want
to talk a little bit about the great horse manure crisis of
1894, where the Times of London reported that if the rate of
growth continued, every street in London would be buried under
nine feet of horse manure within 50 years. And Kingsmill Bond
of the Rocky Mountain Institute, our proud Colorado think-tank,
observed this analogy between then and today's critical mineral
projections, and I think there is a temptation to believe that
we will meet the energy needs of 2050 with the technologies of
today. That is probably not going to happen. In reality, the
radical improvements that are going to occur in technology and
efficiency have been, I think you say, the hallmark of every
technological revolution ever.
So what are some of the lessons, quickly, because I have
got a couple more questions. What are the lessons we can learn
to avoid repeating modeling mistakes from the 19th century here
in the 21st century, and how is USGS poised to help that
happen?
Dr. Fortier. Thank you for that question, Senator. It is a
very good one.
Clearly, predicting the future is hazardous, at best. We
recognize that critical mineral and mineral criticality evolves
over time and in fact, that is acknowledged in the Energy Act
of 2020, which instructs us to review and revise the list no
less than every three years. That is an acknowledgment that
over time what we now consider critical is likely to change. I
think we have to try to stay ahead of these challenges and do
the best we are able to see forward and anticipate impending
disruptions to the supply chain.
Senator Hickenlooper. Great. I couldn't agree more.
I have other questions I am going to send to you, written.
Now I want to just talk to Ms. Wulf and Ms. Padilla, and I
am going to spare you all my normal static presentation on
volcanic vesiculation--magmatic vesiculation. But I do think
that we are in the midst of a great transition, with the energy
transition at the forefront of this, and with each efficiency
and technology improvement, I think mining and minerals are
going to continue to play a pivotal role in this transition.
Mining critical minerals, clean energy technologies, all moving
hand-in-hand, evolving together. That is how civilizations
always progressed.
How do you see the process for integrating innovative
technologies into existing mining practices to maintain the
standards that you all recognize in terms of clean and
sustainable? So how would you guys look at that?
Ms. Padilla. Thank you, Senator.
I think this is a time and an opportunity for us to
incorporate--really model--mining practices as we move forward.
We are doing that at Twin Metals in a number of different ways
through fully electrifying our mining fleet, utilizing olivine
in our tailings for carbon sequestration, no waste rock on the
surface and, frankly, no potential for acid mine drainage at
this mine. We have integrated underground dry stack tailings.
No dam, no tailings pond, no potential for a dam failure. All
of those things combined mean that we can both protect the
Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and provide regional
economic stability for the area. And I think those innovations
will continue.
Senator Hickenlooper. Ms. Wulf.
Ms. Wulf. Thank you, Senator, and I will just say I would
have loved to hear the more technical spiel. I studied
pegmatites, a type of igneous rock enriched in rare earth
elements and lithium.
[Laughter.]
Ms. Wulf. So hello from a fellow geologist.
But in terms of technological advances, if I can borrow a
term from my colleague who is sitting behind me here, I think
what we need is more robust federal investments in
environmental R&D to partner with industry and to help make
their processes cleaner and better. There are, you know,
mechanisms of automation that I have heard about, where instead
of digging a big open pit, if there is a vein, like a
pegmatite, you can have this little autonomous robot that goes
through and just mines that vein. So things like that--thinking
big, again, and working public-private partnerships between the
government and industry to make these things possible, I think,
is very important.
Senator Hickenlooper. And I saw almost every head nodding
as you were speaking. I am not sure they were talking about
agreeing with your principle, which I hope and I think is what
it was, but there is something beautiful just about the word
pegmatite, by itself.
So anyway, I yield back to the Chair. Thank you.
The Chairman [presiding]. Thank you, Senator.
Now we have Senator Marshall.
Senator Marshall. Okay, thank you, Chairman.
My first question is for Dr. Fortier. Talk about potash,
just for a second. Obviously, it was removed from the critical
minerals list. We are facing a famine. The world is facing a
famine. This year, some have said, much more so next year. My
farmers are struggling already to get all the different
fertilizer. Prices are through the roof. I think your notes,
your graph mentioned that 93 percent of the potash is
imported--Canada, a significant portion of that, Russia and
Belarus. Why was it removed from the critical mineral list, and
how do we stand on that?
Dr. Fortier. Thank you for that question, Senator.
You are correct. We have high import reliance for potash.
The bulk of our imports do come from Canada, and U.S.
consumption last year was something on the order of half of
what Canadian annual production was. And the annual production
capacity in Canada is three times U.S. annual consumption. So
there really is no reason in principle that we could not source
all of our potash from Canada. They have some of the largest
potash----
Senator Marshall. Okay, so do you still stand by that
decision? You do not think that other countries are going to be
coming and taking Canadian potash if they cannot get it from
Belarus and Russia?
Dr. Fortier. Certainly, they will.
Senator Marshall. I will move on to my next question. I
will stay with you, Dr. Fortier, if you don't mind. Kansas has
many legacy mining pits, believe it or not. And we have done a
wonderful job restoring them. Some great bass fishing. Have you
ever considered looking at the tailings in Kansas sites for
sources of critical minerals?
Dr. Fortier. Yes, there is an active initiative, and we are
directed to further investigate potential for critical minerals
from waste streams and do a national inventory of critical
minerals in historic mine waste and tailings. That is, I think,
a very positive development and has a lot of potential.
Senator Marshall. Great.
Mr. Melbye, I will go to you next. Talk about nuclear
fuels, and specifically, enriched nuclear fuels. One of my big
concerns of the Iran treaty is, as I understand it, they will
take their super-enriched uranium and sell it--give it to
Russia. Already, we are at their mercy a little bit. How can we
de-link ourselves from the Russian state-owned atomic energy
company? What is the--give us solutions. Talk about solutions,
please.
Mr. Melbye. Yes. Listen, the move to rely on about 20 to 25
percent of our enrichment needs in the United States was more
of a commercial preference, and not to beat up the utilities,
it was a genuine step to diversify their fuel supplies into an
international fuel cycle. But we have seen, through the Iran
sanctions, issues with Rosatom's involvement in Iran. We are
seeing it now with Ukraine and the invasion there, that a
reliance on Russia just is problematic in so many ways. The
high-assay low-enriched uranium is even a more specific
challenge because we can enrich to the normal levels----
Senator Marshall. So I understand the problem. You are
preaching to the choir. What is the solution?
Mr. Melbye. We need to stand up our domestic fuel cycle,
and that means uranium conversion and enrichment industries. I
think some of the initiatives that have been done----
Senator Marshall. What is keeping us from doing that?
Mr. Melbye. It is just the will to move forward, and I
think we----
Senator Marshall. It isn't regulatory? It isn't the cost of
doing business in the United States?
Mr. Melbye. I mean, we have talked about how the chart that
was presented earlier is a stumbling block for us to develop,
but I mean, if we have a national will to have a domestic fuel
cycle that we can support our own needs--energy independence is
something that is a challenge for a lot of countries, but for
us, we have the resources. We have the technology.
Senator Marshall. We have proven we can do it.
Mr. Melbye. Yes.
Senator Marshall. Yes. Ms. Wulf, I want to move to you.
This is a very broad question and you may not like it. To mine
critical minerals in the United States has an environmental
impact. And if we would say that environmental impact is x,
similar mining in China, the environmental impact to the way
they mine, is it 2x, 5x, 10x, a range? Just take a shot in the
dark. I won't quote you.
[Laughter.]
Ms. Wulf. Thank you for the heads-up, Senator, and thank
you for the question.
I don't think I can hazard a guess at the exact difference,
but I would say again that our regulatory environment, our
transparency in our system, and our ability for our citizens to
seek recourse, you know, should anything go awry, I think is
something that is a pillar in the United States and something
that is a benefit and a strength here. So that is not really
something that they have within the Chinese Communist Party. So
yes.
Senator Marshall. Would you agree there is a significant
amount of environmental impact differences by the way we mine
versus the way China mines?
Ms. Wulf. I would, and I would give rare earth elements as
an example. You know, their largest mine, Bayan Obo, which is
first and foremost an iron mine, actually, it is not a rare
earths mine. They are mined as byproducts and co-products from
that mine. There is a great picture from the Guardian that
shows there is a radioactive byproduct when you process rare
earth elements because they often occur simultaneously with
thorium and uranium. And so, in the United States, we have a
very strict process for dealing with that radioactive waste,
which I think we would all agree is great, because we do not
want radioactive waste in our environment. Whereas in China,
they do just put that into a free-flowing lake right next to
the mine.
Senator Marshall. Oh, beautiful. Thank you.
Ms. Wulf. Thank you.
The Chairman. Senator Cortez Masto.
Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you, Mr. Chair and Ranking
Member, I appreciate the conversation today, and to the
panelists.
Let me just say this--Nevada, and many of you know this, it
is home to the only active lithium production site in North
America, and is known to have considerable lithium deposits
with several proposed projects currently under review by the
Interior Department. But Nevada is also home to many innovative
companies contributing to the growth of domestic critical
mineral and battery supply chain, including MP Materials,
headquartered in Las Vegas; Dragonfly Energy, a lithium-ion
battery manufacturer in Reno, Nevada; Redwood Materials,
recycling end-of-life lithium-ion batteries in Carson City,
Nevada; and of course, Tesla. With additional production
facilities coming online, as well as Nevada being home to
several electric battery and supply chain companies, Nevada is
a nexus for our clean energy and our critical mineral future.
And so I want to talk about that because I appreciate Senator
Barrasso stealing my thunder and bringing from the Nevada
Mining Association the permitting--the length that shows how
long it takes to permit, on the wall. This is just, to me, a
reason why we need to streamline our permitting.
I want to talk a little bit about that. So Ms. Wulf, what
specific action should this Committee take to increase domestic
production of critical minerals while ensuring timeliness of
the mine permitting process and the long-term viability of the
domestic mining industry?
Ms. Wulf. Thank you very much for the question, Senator,
and thank you very much for your work on this important issue.
I agree that Nevada is really positioning itself very well for
the future economy.
I would think that there are many things that we could do.
First and foremost, what comes to mind is working with the U.S.
Geological Survey here to increase the wonderful work that they
do in our geologic mapping. It is very difficult to make good
land use planning decisions if we do not know what we have. If
we are not going to mine in one place, what does that mean?
Where could we get it from somewhere else or not, you know, for
our national economic security? So having a better idea of
where our resources are will help with that. I think that
looking to our neighbors to the north, seeing what they are
doing a bit better than we are when it comes to getting these
things permitted. They do have way fewer people than we do and
it does get a little tricky when you are talking about land
disturbance when you have as many people as we do. But for the
NEPA process we have an environmental impact assessment that
has to be done--an EIA--but in Canada it is an ESIA--an
environmental and social impact assessment. And I do feel like
more mining companies are beginning to understand that to make
sure that they are not slapped with lawsuits one after the
next, that they have to have more meaningful and robust
engagement with communities. And so, you know, is there a way
that we can, you know, legislate that, or is it something that,
you know, speaking with companies and just saying, you know, it
behooves you to be a better neighbor. So what can you be doing
to go above and beyond to be a better neighbor in your
communities?
Senator Cortez Masto. So do you believe that it is, in this
day and age with the technology that is available to mining
companies, there is a way to not only mine, but mine
responsibly, so you are still protecting the environment, you
are not negating any of the NEPA or the concerns about
environmental protection from the water, the air, and the
land--there is the ability to do both responsibly--mine, and
like you say, take into consideration the stakeholders and the
needs for the land as well? Do you agree with that?
Ms. Wulf. I do believe so, and that doesn't mean that there
is not room for improvement. I think that there is always room
for improvement. But I do think that there is a way that we can
do this responsibly, and also maybe asking mining companies to
have an adaptive management plan, which I think has been
successful at some existing sites where communities can go to--
whether it is a third-party group or something and say the
issue that is incorrect, work with the mining company to
resolve the issue. I think there was something up at the Eagle
Mine with like a road salt or something and water becoming
contaminated with salt. And so they were able to quickly remedy
that with an adaptive plan.
Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you.
Mr. Melbye, you are shaking your head. Would you mind
weighing in?
Mr. Melbye. Yes, absolutely. I think Ms. Wulf has really
brought up a good point, which is that the regulation is one
thing, but mining companies are embracing ESG principles
because it is the right thing to do. And not only does it give
you the social license to operate in the areas that you want to
develop, but it is also demanded from the investment community.
Companies like Black Rock and others and big investment funds
that are providing the capital for operations demand it. In our
operations, we have embraced the ESG movement completely,
looking at ways to generate electricity, sources of electricity
for our mining projects in South Texas from wind power and
nuclear power, which gives us carbon-free electricity to run
our mines.
This is really--it is a massive trend in the mining
industry. You cannot go to a mining conference where there are
not three or four sessions focused on this. So it really--you
are seeing a transformation of mining to the latest global
standards--highest global standards in uranium and other metals
mining.
Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Senator Hirono.
Senator Hirono. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Melbye and Ms. Padilla, neither of your testimonies
made mention of indigenous communities and the impact of mining
on the indigenous communities. Over half a million Native
Americans live within ten kilometers of the 160,000 abandoned
hardrock mines that dot our western landscape. Mine waste
pollution has been tied to negative health impact on native
populations, such as kidney disease and hypertension for those
living near abandoned uranium mines, and also threatens the
local wildlife that supports subsistence lifestyles and
cultural traditions. How do your organizations factor in the
comments from local indigenous communities as you go through
the process of obtaining a mining permit?
Mr. Melbye. Senator Hirono, absolutely, I mean, gaining
social license to operate definitely means the local
stakeholders, and in many parts of the western United States,
that means engaging our tribal communities and gaining their
consent and becoming partners with them, not adversaries. And
again, the injustices that were committed back, you know, in
the 50s and 60s, is not the mining industry that exists today.
And I think the NEPA and the regulatory process that we go
through has extensive steps for consultation with communities,
but I think innovative mining companies are taking it a step
further and providing employment and training for aboriginal
communities and bringing them in as part of the success of the
project going forward. So it is very important in anything we
do.
Senator Hirono. So I take it that it is in the very early
stages of the process that you would want to have the input
from the indigenous peoples. Would you agree with that, Ms.
Padilla?
Ms. Padilla. Yes, Senator, I really appreciate the question
and the opportunity to discuss this. This is a critical piece
of our plan. Our tribal engagement started many, many years
ago, and we continue to do regular outreach. The tribes in our
area are not just a stakeholder, they are a government, they
are a sovereign entity that has the opportunity to contribute
to both the process and the ultimate outcome of our mine. And
we want to incorporate them at every step of the way, including
those that are closest to us.
Senator Hirono. Ms. Wulf, you mentioned that Canada uses an
ESIA process where they determine the social impacts. So do you
think we should adopt that kind of a process where the social
impact is really codified--the requirement is codified in these
instances of obtaining mining permits?
Ms. Wulf. I do think it is something that the United States
should consider. It seems to be very successful in Canada, and
I think that, as we have all talked about, the social license
is really the most critical piece here. And so, if an ESIA will
help to achieve that, I think that is correct.
Senator Hirono. Do you think it would, Ms. Padilla and Mr.
Melbye?
Ms. Padilla. I think, structurally, the regulatory process
is set up differently in both Canada and Australia, and where
they are utilizing that tool it is often put together early on
in the process. I think it would be very useful as long as it
doesn't add additional delays and additional inefficiencies in
our current regulatory process.
Senator Hirono. What happens if you don't take account of
the social impact is, at the other end is when you are going to
need to face lawsuits et cetera. So it seems to be something
that we should definitely look at.
I would like to ask whether all of the panel agrees that we
should do more to increase critical mineral recycling. Do all
the panelists agree that we can do more to recycle critical
waste--critical minerals? No?
Ms. Padilla. Yes.
Ms. Wulf. Yes.
Senator Hirono. Dr. Z., you are not nodding your head. Are
you an outlier here?
Dr. Ziemkiewicz. That was a grimace. I apologize. I don't
have a poker face, but there has been a Critical Minerals
Institute at Ames, Iowa under U.S. DOE funding for possibly 10
years now. And I am not sure that a whole lot of breakthrough
technologies have resulted from that. In other words, what I
keep getting back is that it is extremely difficult and labor-
intensive to actually separate the rare earth elements--or
particularly critical minerals--out of a recycled consumer
product. You have basically little flakes of things in big
masses of plastic and metal. So recycling is very problematic
and labor-intensive.
Senator Hirono. And would you agree, Ms. Wulf?
Ms. Wulf. I think that there are many challenges to
recycling right now, but there are places like Redwood
Materials in Senator Cortez Masto's district that are doing
this effectively and successfully. I think that from a national
security standpoint, too, that recycling needs to be very much
considered. At the end of the day, these are finite natural
resources that are infinitely recyclable. And so yes, we do
need more R&D to make sure that they are economic and in line
with, you know, compared to virgin resources, but I think that
we are getting there, and we are going to reach a critical mass
of these things in the next 10 to 15 years. So we need to make
sure that we are not caught flat-footed then, just because it
is not economic to do it now.
Senator Hirono. Right.
Mr. Chairman, are you doing a hearing next week on
recycling critical minerals?
The Chairman. Thursday--next Thursday.
Senator Hirono. Thank you. I am very interested because our
country wastes a lot of stuff--not just in this area, but in
just about any area you can think of, we throw stuff away.
Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you. I want to thank all of you--all of
the witnesses. You all have done a great--oh, I am sorry, Mr.
Cassidy, oh, Senator Cassidy snuck in on me.
Senator Cassidy. Yes, you skipped me for Hirono, you know
what I am saying----
[Laughter.]
Senator Cassidy. I thank you all. I actually have questions
on recycling if I get to it, but if we are having a hearing
next week, I will hold those for the second.
Dr. Fortier, in 2019, it was reported by USGS that the deep
sea could contain more cobalt, nickel, and rare earth minerals
than all land-based reserves combined, and it has forecasted
that deep sea mining could account for 15 percent of global
supply by 2050. Now, the Administration clearly has plans to
expand battery-powered vehicles, so that is going to be a big
draw upon this. And we have $6 billion in the Bipartisan
Infrastructure bill to help with battery manufacturing. So what
are your thoughts on what we need to do to source raw materials
from the ocean in a way which does not disturb that ocean in an
environmentally and sensitive way?
Dr. Fortier. I am not sure I can comment on the policy
aspects of that, but certainly, deep-sea mining offers a lot of
potential for resource development. I think from the USGS
perspective, the way we view that is that those are still
resources. They are not yet reserves. Reserves has an economic
connotation, and you need to be able to produce those
economically at current pricing and technology.
Senator Cassidy. Can we?
Dr. Fortier. I think the technology is advancing but nobody
is doing that commercially yet. Nobody has yet demonstrated.
Senator Cassidy. I am told that maybe the Brits and maybe
the Swedes are initiating a process to begin sea-floor
harvesting, if you will.
Dr. Fortier. There has been a lot of activity in this
sphere, and I think people are getting closer to that, but
nobody that I am aware of, is doing that commercially yet.
Senator Cassidy. Okay. Now, typically before we do
something commercially, we do something as a pilot program. You
begin to establish, you know, you do not want to be the first,
but your first has to be done before you can do it more
economically. Is that what I have understood about the Brits
and others? Are they the ones that are beginning to do the
first, to develop the technology?
Dr. Fortier. I think there are a lot of countries that are
developing this technology. They are not the only one.
Senator Cassidy. Then let me ask, because in Louisiana we
have remote-operated vehicles that help us with our oil and gas
drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf. I don't know the
depths, but I am assuming that an ROV could similarly be
employed in this. Is the technology such a reach from what we
are already doing as regards ROVs and et cetera?
Dr. Fortier. I am not an expert in that area, Senator, but
we have had briefings from companies that are engaged in oil
and gas exploration and production, and they seem to believe
that they have technology that can contribute to
commercialization of deep-sea resources.
Senator Cassidy. I will go now to my recycling question,
because this is more of a market, and I am not sure who will
address this. I was told by some folks back home that they are
taking old bauxite that had been used for aluminum, and they
are getting critical minerals. And just when they were about to
stand it up, the Chinese flooded the market with--you know,
normally they keep their price up, and boom, here comes a
competitor. They flooded it, drove them out of business--and
they raised their prices once more. So the question is, do we
have one? It seems as if we should have a mechanism for almost
price support for that sort of predatory activity. Any thoughts
on that, Ms. Wulf?
Ms. Wulf. Yes, and thank you, Senator Cassidy, for the
question, because it is something that is at the forefront of
our mind at SAFE, because if we are going to invest millions to
billions of dollars in these critical resources and our
downstream capabilities as well, we want to make sure that we
can effectively respond to any anti-competitive market behavior
that we might be confronted with. One avenue that we have
looked into for rare earth, specifically, is a processing
cooperative which would attempt to insulate downstream
companies and upstream companies from these price fluctuations,
but in recognizing that this is a major challenge in all
aspects of the supply chain, not just in rare earths
processing.
Senator Cassidy. And Dr. Ziemkiewicz.
Dr. Ziemkiewicz. We actually looked at some bauxite
tailings from a refinery just up river. A company sent us some,
and we found that the rare earth content was something like
half a percent.
Senator Cassidy. Is that good or bad?
Dr. Ziemkiewicz. That is fantastic. That is equivalent to a
really good ore deposit, but no one has been able to find a
good way to extract that.
Senator Cassidy. Now, I was told they had, but, in fact, I
am told that they are about to open. And the day they opened,
boom, the Chinese flooded.
Dr. Ziemkiewicz. I don't know about that, but this is what
I got from my mineral processing colleagues--that the
technology for extraction and refining is still a ways off.
Senator Cassidy. Okay.
Sir, Mr. Melbye, did you have something on that?
Mr. Melbye. Just a comment that that predatory pricing by
state-owned companies is a very real thing, and the Chinese and
Russians employ that in a lot of commodities where they want to
keep us kind of down and advance their interests. So it is a
very real threat.
Senator Cassidy. So not only do we have to develop the
technology to take this half percent to make it economically
viable, but we also need a way to stop the predatory--address
the predatory pricing activities of the people who control
those resources internationally. The one is no good without the
other. Okay, well, that is a message to us.
Thank you, and I yield.
The Chairman. Now, you want a second round?
[Laughter.]
The Chairman. I want to thank all the witnesses. I think
you can tell the interest that we had today and everyone being
here and participating shows the great interest that we have,
and also, they acknowledge that we have a true need here in
America. And so we are at a crossroads right now with which way
we go and how we use the technology for a better climate, but
also making sure we meet the needs of the American public and
not hold ourselves hostage to foreign supply chains. That has
been my greatest concern, and we all have to be in the same
boat--the environmentalists, the industrialists, everybody in
the same boat here. If they are not, we are screwed. That is
the bottom line.
I have said this--we have got to be able to get permitting.
You saw all the concern we had on permitting. Well, I have
known it for years, you know, that that is been a stumbling
block in America right now that keeps us from barely unlocking
the energy that we have and the ability that we have to
outcompete anyone and outproduce anyone in the world.
So with that, Dr. Z., you know what you all are doing and I
spoke to my colleagues here. Everyone is interested in it. That
is the quick, easy way into that to start meeting the demands
that we have. If we are going to build this up, we have to be
able to do that, but also getting into where we can really get
into the mining and processing. I truly believe that if the
United States of America does not lead the charge on a North
American energy alliance by using the resources that we have
here in the North American continent that helps us be energy
independent, but also an energy supplier for the free world so
they do not have to depend on other parts of the world that can
use it and weaponize it against them, which they have done and
they will do it. I have said this also, what we have seen
Russia do by weaponizing energy, I guarantee, China will do the
same thing weaponizing critical minerals that we need. I do not
think that is far-fetched for any of us to believe that will
happen.
With that, again, thank you all. You made an effort to be
here and we appreciate it very much.
Members are going to have until close of business tomorrow
to submit additional questions for the record.
With that, the committee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:18 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
APPENDIX MATERIAL SUBMITTED
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