India and the United States are likely to sign an initial pact for cooperation on critical minerals this week, two Indian government sources said, as the two countries try to bolster trade ties despite diplomatic hiccups.
They are expected to sign an agreement to partner and cooperate in the area of critical minerals during Indian trade minister Piyush Goyal’s visit to Washington, the sources said.
In an age where millennials struggle with mortgages and the cost of living, it’s easy to romanticize the past.
Today, life is not a stroll through a rose garden. But for the purpose of a reality check, it is worth contrasting our current challenges with those of our ancestors who chose to pursue a brighter future in the New World just over a century ago.
Let’s take a look at what life was like for our ancestors at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Countless people in Slovakia, then Upper Hungary, lived in poverty. Their homeland did not offer them a way out of the vicious circle of destitution.
Biden officials point to the Eagle mine as proof that mining critical minerals in the U.S. can gain public support while avoiding pollution and trampling Indigenous rights. Not everyone is convinced.
MICHIGAMME TOWNSHIP, Michigan — In the sun-drenched forests of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula stands the black, gaping mouth of the nation’s only operating nickel mine.
Hundreds of feet below in the darkness, heavy machinery blasts, scrapes and prepares to haul up to the surface rock rich with tiny flecks of high-grade nickel and copper formed more than 1 billion years ago.
Sept 13 (Reuters) – The Biden administration on Friday locked in steep tariff hikes on Chinese imports, including a 100% duty on electric vehicles, to boost protections for strategic industries from China’s state-driven industrial practices.
The U.S. Trade Representative’s office said that many of the tariffs, including a 100% duty on Chinese EVs, 50% on solar cells and 25% on steel, aluminum, EV batteries and key minerals, would take effect on Sept. 27.
Sibanye Stillwater says it needs government support to compete with foreign producers that pay workers less and abide by looser environmental regulations.
Sibanye Stillwater, the South African company that operates the nation’s only major palladium mine in south-central Montana, said Thursday that it plans to lay off about 40% of its Montana workforce as it scales back its operation in an effort to offset losses caused by low metal prices.
Reliance on critical minerals is hurting the United States, senator says
A U.S. senator wants to ban the import of essential minerals from Russia such as platinum, palladium and copper with legislation introduced this week targeting eight critical minerals, including copper, zinc and palladium.
The bill by Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., was introduced after the announcement by Montana’s Stillwater Mine that it is laying off 700 employees.
Sept 12 (Reuters) – Native American opposition to Rio Tinto and BHP’s Resolution Copper mine could prove crucial for the 2024 U.S. presidential vote in the battleground state of Arizona, underscoring the high tension over where best to extract critical minerals for the energy transition.
The mine would, if built, supply more than a quarter of America’s appetite for copper and be a key part of Washington’s efforts to eat into China’s role as the world’s largest copper processor and consumer.
Apache Stronghold, a nonprofit group comprised of Arizona’s San Carlos Apache tribe and conservationists, asked the court to overturn a March ruling from a sharply divided San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allowing the federal government to swap acreage with the mining companies for their Resolution Copper project.
The appeal to the nine justices was delivered in person by a courier after the Apache held a ceremony of prayer and dancing on the court’s steps in Washington, the culmination of a months-long caravan from their Arizona reservation to the capital.
Pull towards Russia and China grows stronger, says boss of Kazatomprom
Kazatomprom’s chief executive has warned that Russia’s war on Ukraine is making it harder for the world’s largest uranium producer to keep supplying the west as the gravitational pull towards Moscow and Beijing grows stronger.
Meirzhan Yussupov, chief of the Kazakh state miner, said sanctions caused by the war had created obstacles to supplying western utilities. Kazakhstan produces 43 per cent of the world’s uranium, equivalent to the market share that the Opec cartel has over oil.
In a step forward for efforts to acquire the metals crucial to addressing climate change, on Monday a new plant that can extract nickel and cobalt from scrap material opens in Fairfield, Ohio. The resulting metals will be used in new batteries and other clean energy markets.
Extracting metals out of old material avoids the environmental damage of open pit mining and prevents the metals from ending up in the landfill. Many see this as the future, even if it takes decades to become reality.
https://www.northernminer.com/
As we look in the waning days of summer to the United States’ Southwest in this edition, it strikes us that there’s been a staggering number of days that only saw three mines start production in Canada’s southern neighbour.
It’s something like 6,600 days – or 18 years – according to a recent study by S&P Global. The most recent major approval for a new mine now in production is Lundin Mining’s nickel-copper Eagle mine in northern Michigan, which began commercial output in 2013, more than a decade ago.
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) — It was the summer of 1945 when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Japan, killing thousands of people as waves of destructive energy obliterated two cites. It was a decisive move that helped bring about the end of World War II, but survivors and the generations that followed were left to grapple with sickness from radiation exposure.
At the time, U.S. President Harry Truman called it “the greatest scientific gamble in history,” saying the rain of ruin from the air would usher in a new concept of force and power. What he didn’t mention was that the federal government had already tested this new force on U.S. soil.
(Bloomberg) — US coal producer Arch Resources Inc. agreed to merge with rival Consol Energy Inc. in a $2.3 billion deal aimed at creating a North American mining heavyweight to deliver the fuel around the world.
The companies announced the transaction in a statement Wednesday after the deal talks were reported earlier by Bloomberg. Under the terms of the merger agreement, Arch stockholders will receive a fixed exchange ratio of 1.326 shares of Consol stock for each share of Arch common stock. Consol shareholders will own about 55% of the combined company, to be called Core Natural Resources.
Critical minerals sit at the intersection of three policy objectives for the United States – and at times the security, economic, and climate aims are in direct contradiction.
“When I think about climate change, I think jobs,” U.S. President Joe Biden has repeatedly said. His landmark Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) embodies this idea, tying together U.S. climate and industrial policies with a vast array of subsidies aimed at sparking a green manufacturing boom. Built into these subsidies are mechanisms to secure U.S. supply chains and to shore up domestic manufacturing, which has atrophied in recent decades, strategic priorities that Biden inherited from his predecessor, Donald Trump.
GRAND CANYON — On a summer Sunday morning near the intersection of Forest Road 320 and State Route 64, more than 100 people gathered to protest the first shipments of uranium ore from a mine south of the Grand Canyon.
The protest took place at a point along the authorized route for transporting uranium ore from Energy Fuels’ Pinyon Plain Mine to its White Mesa Mill near Blanding, Utah. The mining company had moved the first truckloads or unprocessed ore from the mine last Tuesday.
