MINING companies with projects in the US were more hopeful of speedier delivery following the election of Donald Trump as President, said the Financial Times.
It cited mining CEOs saying there was an opportunity for an shorter permit applications for projects which take about 29 years on average in the US. That is according to a report in June by S&P Global which said this makes the country only behind Zambia in terms of lead times.
“The US is not achieving its mineral potential,” said Frank Hoffman, associate director at S&P Global. “It has a huge and strategically important mineral endowment, whose development is too long, and ultimately too uncertain, to attract the investment its peers receive.”
“If we’re going to ‘drill, baby, drill,’ we have to also ‘mine, baby mine’,” said Trump and interior secretary Doug Burgum at the Cera conference in Houston recently. Citing people familiar with President Trump’s plans, the Financial Times said an executive order on critical minerals was due to be signed in days that will probably include permitting reform, and support for metals refining facilities.
Rio Tinto, BHP, Antofagasta, Freeport-McMoRan and Barrick Gold are among the companies poised to benefit from the White House’s pro-mining policies, said the newspaper.
Mark Bristow, CEO of Barrick Gold, which runs several large gold mines in Nevada, told the Financial Times that he was optimistic about US mining under Trump. “The last time he was in the White House, he took a while to get to the mining side, but definitely changed things,” said Bristow. “And so we are looking forward to him doing something like that in the mining industry again.”
China’s control over critical mineral supply chains is uppermost in the Trump administration’s concerns. “The government has realised that we have offshored so much manufacturing . . . There is recognition that we need to reinvest in mining in the United States,” said Jon Cherry, CEO of Perpetua Resources, a company developing an antimony project in Idaho. Antimony is used in the manufacture of munitions.
There is a world shortage of antimony which could worsen as the US and Europe replenish stockpiles of bullets and bombs used in Ukraine, said Bloomberg News.
The newswire quoted Larvotto Resources MD Ron Heeks as saying: “The antimony and lead from these munitions would normally be recycled into new weapons, but those have gone to the front line in Ukraine”.
“Under the Trump administration, there is an increasing recognition of the need for domestic sources of copper and other critical materials in the US,” Katie Jackson, Rio Tinto’s head of copper told the Financial times. “We can play a significant role in helping to deliver these materials.”
