Rocks Reads Roundup, 10/2
some wheal exciting news from Cornwall, folks (sorry) and apparently we're in a minerals national emergency?
Hello everyone! Here are some minerals links for this week. Pretty lithium-heavy, but also an executive order you may have missed and an Alaskan mining project’s CEO getting totally owned. Enjoy!
Giving this story top heading because of its very niche pun header: The Economist had a story this week about lithium extraction exploration in depleted Cornwall mines or as they titled the piece,"wheels within wheals." ("Wheal" is a Cornish term for mine, lithium is used in electric cars aka "wheels"; someone was very excited to do a wordplay and I am here for it.) There are two projects in development right now, one doing brine extraction and one doing crushed rock extraction; both are in very early stages. The story's super-brief, but add to the list of places where mining has been dying in search of innovative new ways to desperately suck more profits out of the earth.
Trump issuing an executive order on critical minerals is definitely not the biggest Trump-related news this week, so it's understandable if you missed it. (What a fucking day folks, am I right?) The EO’s interesting though, for a couple of reasons.
First, he declared the United States' "undue reliance on critical minerals" imported from other countries a national emergency. Relative to all the other national emergencies, this is...bold? Secondly, it orders the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Defense to determine whether the Defense Production Act can be used to fund increased critical minerals production.
I'm not really sure why Interior would need to be roped into this because (as readers might remember from this newsletter a few weeks ago) this year the Defense Production Act already awarded funding to a rare earth recycling facility in San Marcos, Texas via its Title III program. And Trump already amended the Defense Production Act to incorporate rare earths in 2019, which is I think partly how the Pentagon was able to allocate funds to the Mountain Pass mine and Lynas Corp earlier this year. The only angle I can see for bringing Interior into the conversation is with an eye toward funding critical mineral stuff on public lands?
Another fun item in the EO is a directive to the Secretary of Energy to develop guidance on whether a Department of Energy program for "Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing" established in 2005could be used to support critical minerals funding. Check out this item in the guidance:
(ii) shall examine the meaning of the terms “avoid, reduce, or sequester” and other key terms in section 16513(a) of title 42, United States Code, which provides that the Secretary “may make guarantees under this section only for projects that — (1) avoid, reduce, or sequester air pollutants or anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases"
Earlier in the EO, there's an explicit mention of the importance of barite, one of the US' critical minerals, in fracking. Honestly, I think the weirdest part of this is they're bothering to even try and spell out that they're trying to make sure they've established legal technicalities to justify shit like this? Motherfucker's already packing the courts with sympathetic judges.
I would love to know which aides and advisors within the administration are pushing the critical minerals stuff along. It's clearly not Trump's passion project. Maybe Peter Navarro? He's written hot takes about critical minerals for the administration before. The EO was timed to coincide with Trump's campaign visit to Minnesota, where Navarro recently expressed enthusiasm for expanding the state's "Iron Range" (a talking point he used around the EO this week) and which the campaign apparently believes will help Trump win over Minnesota voters.
A little old (thanks Zane for the heads up) but a follow-up on the Alaska Pebble Mine story from a few weeks back: Tom Collier, the CEO of the company behind the mine, resigned after the Environmental Investigation Agency released recordings of Collier and the CEO of Pebble's parent company, Northern Dynasty, boasting about their relationships with elected officials and regulators. The tapes also spurred a call for a DOJ investigation into whether executives lied during Congressional testimony. (For new subscribers, the Pebble Mine is a contested project that Native and environmental groups oppose because of its potential threat to salmon fisheries in the area. Here's an overview from Frontline.)
Following on some of the Tesla battery news from last week, Benchmark Mineral Intelligence reported that the company will be building a lithium hydroxide refinery adjacent to its in-development Terafactory in Texas, currently scheduled to enter operation in late 2022. The facility will process spodumene rock, indicating that the lithium-from-clay-deposits thing mentioned by Elon Musk last week is probably still pretty far from being a reality.
In California, governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation (bill text here) creating a "Blue Ribbon Commission on Lithium Extraction in California." The bill, written by State Assembly member Eduardo Garcia, focuses the commission's efforts mainly on potential extraction from the area around the Salton Sea, a lake in the Imperial Valley (which Garcia represents) perhaps best known for its high toxicity and beaches of mostly ground-down fish bones instead of sand, and in recent years for generating toxic dust due to evaporation. (Oh, and this Val Kilmer movie I’ve never seen where he plays a trumpet in a fire? I have never seen this movie but its existence haunts me, somehow.)
Efforts to extract lithium from brine produced by local geothermal plants date at least as far back as 2009, but (although earlier this year a new venture, Lilac Solutions, received a bunch of VC money to revive such efforts). The commission has a year to file a report with the state legislature and issue any recommendations.
Thanks again for reading, more next week.