The American Exploration & Mining Association (AEMA) released the following statement from Mark Compton, Executive Director, regarding the Interagency Working Group on Mining Regulations, Laws and Permitting (IWG) report published today:
We simply are not moving mining projects forward in a timeframe that will allow our Nation to achieve its ambitious clean energy objectives or reduce our reliance on foreign minerals that empowers our adversaries to strategically weaponize minerals against us. The Interagency Working Group’s (IWG) report was an opportunity to identify ways to eliminate some of the current barriers to discovering and developing minerals on public lands. Unfortunately, in many ways it missed the mark.
With skyrocketing global mineral demand and bipartisan recognition of the need for a strong domestic mineral supply chain to reduce our risky dependence on foreign minerals, the IWG was formed to be a whole government effort “to promote the sustainable and responsible development of critical minerals.” Yet, despite bipartisan mandates for a more efficient permitting process, the administration rolls out ideas that have repeatedly been rejected by Congress.
The intention of the IWG was to improve our process and increase domestic mining, not derail it. More than half of public lands already are set aside for conservation and preservation purposes and are functionally off-limits to mining. Shrinking the available land base where mineral exploration and mining are allowed would reduce the number of future mineral discoveries that can become mines.
Even the prospect of some of the proposed changes, such as the conversion to a leasing system, will yield years of policy and implementation uncertainties that will push exploration and mining companies away from U.S. mineral development opportunities, exacerbating our reliance on countries with lower environmental and labor standards.
The report seems to start with the false premise that mining in the U.S. is not done in an environmentally and socially responsible manner. On the contrary, the U.S. mining industry is the global standard for responsible mining. While acknowledging we can always do better, for a long time the mining industry has been committed to meaningful, respectful dialogue and engagement with Tribes and local communities to improve projects and bring a variety of benefits to stakeholders. It is our recommendation that the federal government follow suit and improve their own consultation process.
As the departments of Defense, Energy and State work to reverse our path of dangerous reliance on minerals from adversarial countries, the mixed bag of recommendations in this report shows the administration is in conflict with itself and what we believed were the universal goals of this working group.
AEMA is committed to continuing to work constructively with the administration and Congress to ensure the timely advancement of domestic minerals projects to help meet our Nation’s critical needs.