International Media Resource Articles – Page 5

As Pacific Islands Caution Against Seabed Mining, the US Prepares to Trash the Rules – by Camilla Pohle (The Diplomat – May 16, 2025)

May 20, 2025

The White House’s executive order last month purports to authorize mining in international waters – against the authority of a U.N. regulatory body.

In recent years, deep-sea mining has emerged as a polarizing issue in the Pacific Islands, and the nascent industry is not yet regulated. Now the region is contending with another challenge: the potential breakdown of international rules that might be the marine environment’s last defense.

The Pacific seabed is estimated to hold billions of dollars worth of manganese, cobalt, copper, and nickel, which are used to make smartphones, batteries for electric vehicles, and solar panels, and which are also crucial to the defense and aerospace industries.

A new cold war is brewing over rare earth minerals – by Abigail Bassett (The Verge – May 15, 2025)

May 16, 2025

https://www.theverge.com/

China has implemented new export controls for rare earth minerals and magnets. The changes could upend the shift to electric vehicles.

The future of everything from smartphones, to military equipment, to electric vehicles hangs on 17 rare earth minerals and the magnets that they’re made into. And China, the world’s largest refiner and producer, is tightening its grip and threatening the US’ largest automakers.

Over the last 30 years, China has methodically cornered the market on mining and refining rare earth minerals, which are used to produce a variety of common items like passenger vehicles and everyday electronics. In the wake of US President Donald Trump’s increasingly aggressive trade war, China is leveraging its position as the world’s largest producer, at the expense of the American auto industry.

Guinea repossess 51 mining licences, information minister says – by Maxwell Akalaare Adombila(Reuters – May 16, 2025)

May 16, 2025

https://www.reuters.com/

Guinea’s military government has taken back 51 mining licences as it steps up efforts to repossess claims or concessions where operations have either not been launched or where it says permits are being underutilised, its information minister said.

Reuters first reported that the government planned to cancel the licences on Thursday. Fana Soumah announced in a televised address late Thursday night that Guinea’s military ruler Mamady Doumbouya had signed the repossession decree, which covers bauxite, gold, diamond, graphite and iron concessions.

China retains rare earth export controls as bargaining chip amid trade war truce with US – by Joyce ZK Lim (Asia News Network – May 16, 2025)

May 16, 2025

Asia News Network – Bringing Asia Closer

SHENZHEN – Even as China and the US roll back tariffs and other trade salvos amid a 90-day truce, there is one powerful source of leverage that Beijing appears to be retaining: the control of its exports of critical minerals, including rare earths.

China’s Commerce Ministry said on May 12, the same day that details of the US-China agreement were announced, that strengthening export controls of strategic mineral resources was crucial to national security.

Utah leaders praise Trump’s fast-tracking of a ‘vital’ uranium mine. Environmentalists say the move ‘beggars belief.’ – by Anastasia Hufham (Salt Lake Tribune – May 16, 2025)

May 16, 2025

https://www.sltrib.com/

State leaders have nothing but praise for the Trump administration’s decision to significantly shorten the environmental review process of a southeastern Utah uranium project.

Earlier this week, the Department of the Interior announced it was fast-tracking the permitting process for Anfield Energy Inc.’s plans to reopen the Velvet-Wood uranium mine in San Juan County. The environmental assessment for the project must be completed by the Bureau of Land Management in just 14 days — as opposed to the prior timeline of months or years.

Burgundy Goes All In on Downstream Deals, Closes Manufacturing Business – by Leah Meirovich (Rapaport Magazine – May 14, 2025)

May 14, 2025

New Home

Burgundy Diamond Mines will work directly with manufacturers, traders, jewelers and luxury brands to make direct deals for the sale of rough diamonds from its Ekati mine in Canada.

The collaborations are a way for the miner to maximize the value of its diamonds, it said Tuesday. It will also allow the company and its partners to have full traceability on its goods from mine to market, it explained.

China Tightens Control of Critical Minerals in Peru and Brazil – by Maria Zuppello (Dialogo-Americas.com – May 13, 2025)

May 14, 2025

New Home Page

Driven by its ambition to achieve greater control over key raw materials used in high-tech industries for its own gain and exert geopolitical influence, China has been accelerating its expansion in the critical minerals sector worldwide.

The strategy for monopoly over minerals essential for warfare technologies and military modernization has led Beijing to increase its investment and influence in Latin America, a move experts say poses global and national security concerns, as China could use critical minerals as bargaining chip in conflicts or disrupt supply chains to hinder technological advancements.

The Taliban and Burkina Faso ambassadors pledge new trade and mining cooperation – by Wilson McMakin (Associated Press – May 2025)

May 14, 2025

https://apnews.com/

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — The Taliban’s acting ambassador to Iran has met with his Burkina Faso counterpart in the Iranian capital Tehran as part of a broader outreach effort by the West African country to win new trade partners, according to Taliban-controlled media.

During the meeting between acting Ambassador Maulvi Fazl Mohammad Haqqani and Ambassador Mohammad Kabura, both parties pledged to cooperate on trade, mining and vocational training. The Taliban are the de facto rulers of Afghanistan.

China’s rare earth curbs have ‘changed psychology’ at US firms (Bloomberg News – May 12, 2025)

May 14, 2025

https://www.bloomberg.com/

China’s weaponization of rare earths in its trade war with the US will spark a much greater focus on American supply security for critical minerals, according to MP Materials Corp., the only US miner of the key materials used in smartphones and defense applications.

“Regardless of how trade negotiations evolve from here, the system as it existed is broken, and the rare-earth Humpty Dumpty, so to speak, is not getting put back together,” the miner’s chief executive officer, Jim Litinsky, said on an earnings call last Friday.

So much for ‘drill, baby, drill’? – by Matt Egan (CNN.com – May 12, 2025)

May 14, 2025

https://www.cnn.com/

America’s oil industry is facing immense pressure during Trump 2.0. Even though President Donald Trump vowed to usher in a period of American energy dominance, the administration’s trade war and OPEC’s production hikes have cast a shadow over the oil patch.

In fact, once-gangbusters US oil production growth is now at risk of grinding to a halt — or even going in reverse. Hurt by weakening demand and depressed prices, US oil output is now expected to shrink in 2026, S&P Global Commodity Insights projected on Monday. S&P estimates that US oil production will dip to 13.3 million barrels per day in 2026, a 130,000-barrel decline from its 2025 forecast.

State of Diamonds: What’s Next for Lab-Grown Diamonds? – by Avi Krawitz (National Jeweler – May 14, 2025)

May 14, 2025

https://nationaljeweler.com/

While the product has entrenched itself in the market, retailers and consultants are assessing the next phase of the category’s development.

Being late to the party can be an advantage, says Constance Polamalu while relating her journey on the road to selling lab-grown diamonds. As chief operating officer of Zachary’s Jewelers in Annapolis, Maryland, Polamalu took time during the pandemic to assess opportunities in the lab-grown market.

“Our area tends to be a bit delayed in following trends and there wasn’t a big advocate for lab grown here at the time, but it was looming,” she recalls.

France’s Orano files lawsuit over staff detention in Niger – by Anna Peverieri, Forrest Crellin and Portia Crowe(Reuters – May 13, 2025)

May 14, 2025

https://www.reuters.com/

French uranium miner Orano said on Tuesday it had filed a lawsuit with the Niger courts over the “arbitrary arrest, illegal detention and unjust confiscation of property” involving its staff and assets in the country.

Niger and neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso have been stepping up pressure on foreign mining companies over the past year, seizing assets and removing permits as all three Sahel countries look to assert more sovereignty over their natural resources.

A Double-Whammy Of Politics And Science Knocks Gold – by Tim Treadgold (Forbes Magazine – May 12, 2025)

May 13, 2025

https://www.forbes.com/

Politics and science have combined to wipe $225 an ounce off the price of gold in three weeks with worse to come if peace takes hold in war zones and if an experiment in man-made gold moves out of its laboratory phase.

The fall from a peak of $3433 an ounce on April 22 to around $3208/oz today was caused largely by the promise of peace in Ukraine and Gaza and an easing of tariffs in the U.S. v China trade war.

Could Trump use wartime emergency law to boost Montana metals mining, curtail Russian imports? – by Mike Sunnucks (Fairfield Sun Times – May 12, 2025)

May 13, 2025

https://www.fairfieldsuntimes.com/

President Donald Trump invoked a wartime and emergency law in March to bolster critical materials and rare-earth metals mining production in the U.S.

“The Defense Production Act (DPA) will be used to expand domestic mineral production capacity,” reads the order, referring to the federal law that was established during the Korean War, invoked during the Cold War to help bolster U.S. aluminum and titanium industries, and most recently during the COVID-19 pandemic to increase manufacturing of masks and ventilators.

Now, there could be an effort by Trump to use his emergency powers under the DPA to bolster platinum and palladium mining in Montana and curtail Russian imports of the precious metals. Montana is the only state where platinum and palladium (the latter used mostly in catalytic converters for cars and trucks) is mined.

A Toxic Pit Could Be a Gold Mine for Rare-Earth Elements – by Jim Robbins (New York Times – May 13, 2025)

May 13, 2025

https://www.nytimes.com/

Mining continues at the Continental Pit. Nearby is the Berkeley Pit, a site for acid mine drainage that poses an opportunity for extracting valuable metals.

There’s a tale told about a miner who found copper cans in his garbage dump in the early days of mining. Wastewater from copper mining had flowed through his land, he said, and turned steel cans into copper. The story might be apocryphal, but the process is real, and it’s called cementation. Montana Resources, the mining company that took over from the Anaconda Copper Company, still uses this alchemical trick in a process at its Continental Pit mine in Butte, Mont.

Next to the mine is the Berkeley Pit, which is filled with 50 billion gallons of a highly acidic, toxic brew. Montana Resources pipes liquid from the pit, enabling it to cascade onto piles of scrap iron. The iron becomes copper and is gathered for production.