Hello rocks readers and I hope you were able to take some time to celebrate the fact a very, very harmful and cruel man had a very, very bad day yesterday. I had pretty much resigned myself to things going the other way back in July, so I was mostly relieved by the possibility of being wrong. Really hope I continue to be wrong, because I'm guessing things are going to get real ugly and real dumb for the remainder of the year.
Medium-Warm Election Take
I wish I had more exciting post-election mineral takes for all of you but honestly? I'm a) still watching to see if this doesn’t go sideways and we stay under overt fascism and b) it's probably not going to be an issue dramatically transformed by a new administration, policy-wise. Folks, we are still very much On The Rocks for the foreseeable. (See what I did there?)
Of course there will be change. Certain overtly harmful environmental policies implemented under Trump will probably be halted by a Biden administration, and that will affect some mining projects. The recent opening of the Tongass National Forest for mining and logging, for instance, will likely be abandoned, which would threaten the long-stalled Bokan Mountain rare earth mining project. The "Critical Minerals Strategy" and national emergency declared by Trump will likely be abandoned. The tone of federal policy will probably change to a slightly less sinophobic one.
But when it comes to federal funding for critical minerals research, like the Department of Energy's coal waste REE extraction work? That stuff all started under Obama. Ernest Moniz, Obama's secretary of energy, is rumored to be returning under Biden and he's probably going to keep supporting critical minerals work that happened under his watch. Whether there will be more of it or more attention to it is kind of going to depend on how much Biden can actually get done with regard to climate policy, I think. I could totally see opening up certain slag-mining projects or other weird post-mining gleaning for energy-critical materials as a concession to conservatives in economically deteriorating coal regions who otherwise might not support a Green New Deal (or Moniz's preferred, kinda more neolib Green Real Deal created at his organization the Energy Futures Initiative–and yes, insert joke about capitalist realism here).
At the level of industry, a Biden administration that revives subsidizing renewable energy could boost mineral demand and could heighten anxieties about China's outsized role in the supply chain. It might also increase investment in battery recycling and e-waste processing businesses. But setting up and getting a mine operational is going to stay hella slow, so I don't think that rocks-related stuff is going to radically transform come 2021. Then again, I still am far from an expert on this stuff and I was (let's hope) pretty wrong about how the election itself was going to play out, so we'll see.
OK, enough exhausted election takes and back to minerals reads. There's fewer links this week because, well, everything. But! Cute update for Lanthanide Heroes who paid a little more for the newsletter: your (first but likely not last) enamel pins and cool rocks will be going out soon. Here is a picture of the pin!
(Check out Substack finally getting alt text!! Way to meet the minimum requirements!!)
The pin is a little (1 inch) celebration of monazite, a mineral rich in rare earths and also thorium which is one reason a lot of rare earth mining is hella toxic–it's often of monazite deposits. It's a silly little thing but I'm really pleased with how it turned out, so I kind of want to do more mineral-specific enamel pins (spodumene’s probably next even though it’s not a lanthanide just because it’s hella cute).
The run on these was pretty small (100), so if you really really want in on one now's the time to upgrade your subscription. I'll be sending out a separate form for getting mailing addresses from people. Thank you again for your support and I hope you enjoy the pin as much as I do!
Did you also not finish Planetary Mine? Read this then join my book club to finish it
Thea Riofrancos' review of Planetary Mine is great, especially if you are like me and found the many many pages of Planetary Mine dedicated to state debates and Marxism sommelier notes (this term makes sense to me I am not sure it makes sense to anyone else?) hard to get through which is why maybe you still haven't finished it. Not only did it motivate me to pick the book back up, it gave me some hope and inspiration by highlighting the many movements happening worldwide to challenge extractivism.
"Congolese communities living near the stolen mine received no compensation as their plight was not taken into consideration in the US court proceedings."
In the Eastern District of New York, hedge fund Och-Ziff Capital Management Group were ordered to pay $135 million in restitution to shareholders who lost money on–and I guess literally lost, more on that in a second–a Congolese copper and cobalt mine made by firm subsidiary OZ Africa. This ruling extends out from a series of cases that, according to the DOJ, were "the first time a hedge fund has been held to account for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act." As the header for this indicates, it's not much of a victory for anyone in DRC. UK watchdog group RAID has a good rundown of some of the ins and outs of the case, including how the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the investment arm of the World Bank, apparently did not participate in the case despite being a shareholder in Africo Resources Ltd, the firm that lost money on/lost the mine.
The very short version of this longer-running corruption case is that OZ Africa did a lot of bribes in a process of basically treating mines as financialized commodities. (The much longer version is that most of the bribes and things were coordinated with Dan Gertler, a name you might recall from The Panama Papers.) Where Africo Resources and the copper mine comes in is actually pretty wild, and I would recommend the legal filing for a good read. Apparently Africo "indirectly"–I don't 100% understand how this works, but whatever–held development rights on the Kalukundi Mine, a copper and cobalt mine in Katanga province. A former employee filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against the company in DRC and won, and a DRC court gave the former employee the right to auction the rights off to satisfy the judgement against the company. But nobody...nobody told the Canadian company with the indirect rights to the mine that this was happening. Then when they did find out and fought to get the mine rights back, they were actually transferred to Gertler who then worked with OZ Africa to basically buy out Africo. The mine was sold to a Kazakh company and remains undeveloped. It's fucking bonkers and I am probably not doing the story total justice here but that's partly because you should go read it.
Tanzania gets closer to opening its first rare earth mine
More of a "thing to watch" story–an Australian mining company is inching closer to receiving approval for a rare earth mine in Tanzania. Described by Peak Resources Ltd. (mining company names, folks, you can't make them up) as "one of the world’s largest and highest grade undeveloped neodymium (Nd) & praseodymium (Pr) rare earth projects." Honestly, given how slow all mining things move I still take that with a grain of salt but in general rare earth mining development in African countries is something I think is worth keeping an eye on.
Thanks for reading! I am exhausted and anxious but glad for the energy of yesterday. Take care.