So far in his second term as president, Trump’s administration has claimed to have approved, expedited, or publicly endorsed at least 28 different mines and mineral exploration projects, according to a review of Bureau of Land Management notices and federal permitting databases, with more likely in the offing. Many of these projects may very well produce minerals required for key energy or defense purposes, and some of them are guaranteed to do so. But at least a few have not yet been proven to be economically viable in the way investors typically expect from mining companies.
Conservationists have decried these actions as an unnecessary risk to sensitive landscapes, which could be irrevocably changed without a guarantee of improved energy security. And even some in the mining industry are quietly noting these examples, saying they could represent a paradigm shift in how America treats the mining industry.
“This is what you’d expect from China,” a former veteran mining industry lobbyist told me, requesting anonymity to protect their current business from retribution. “The U.S. prides itself on mines that are good neighbors. The U.S. doesn’t have a perfect record, but those are things that it values.”
“I’m not saying the companies are going to do something wrong here,” the source continued, “but we don’t know that.”
The most headline-grabbing example of this rush to permit came last week, when the Interior Department said it would for the permitting of a large uranium mine in Utah known as Velvet-Wood. The department said it would complete Velvet-Wood’s environmental review within two weeks — a process that has historically taken years.
On first blush, abbreviating the approval process for a mine that will produce energy fuel for nuclear power plants resembles the sort of permitting reform that climate hawks and centrist policy wonks have craved for years. Velvet-Wood’s developer, Anfield Energy, claims the site will also produce vanadium, a strategic mineral used in defense-grade steel.
A deeper examination, however, exposes signs of haste that go beyond all deliberate speed.
Ordinarily, mines take years to develop for reasons wholly unrelated to the federal permitting process. Usually a project requires years of exploration and study to verify that the area where digging will happen holds proven “resources” and then “reserves.” Think of resources vs. reserves as the difference between lukewarm and high levels of confidence that minerals are not only present but also economic to mine and process. It is unusual for any mine to be built without proven resources, let alone reserves, and feasibility studies are the way companies usually communicate that level of proof to investors. These studies have also been a primary mode of conveying a project’s value and design to the government.
Until our present policy moment, the permitting process was so lengthy that it made little sense to pursue it without first giving investors the certainty brought by a feasibility study. Anfield and other companies appear to have found a work-around to demonstrate that certainty, however, at least to the government: Asking to dig in places where mines used to be decades ago.
Anfield has not yet completed a feasibility study for Velvet-Wood, which would include the site of a former underground uranium mine. The most recent study of the project was a 2023 “preliminary economic assessment” that documented some of the old mining infrastructure and otherwise largely referenced historical data about mineralization. The company stated in the report that the study was “too speculative geologically to have economic considerations applied to them,” and that “there is no certainty that the preliminary economic assessment will be realized.”
In Anfield’s own press release announcing the Trump administration’s decision to quickly permit the project, the company states that it “has not done sufficient work to classify these historic estimates” for uranium and vanadium at the site. Anfield did not respond to requests for comment on why the company requested government permits before finishing a feasibility study.
Under the Velvet-Wood deposit’s previous owner, Russian mining company Uranium One, a draft feasibility study did find economically viable uranium. But that study is more than a decade old and was not made public, according to press materials at the time.
In order to become operational, Anfield expected to have to update the decades-old plan of operations for Velvet-Wood, according to the 2023 economic assessment, which also said BLM would need to take into account the impacts of restarting a formerly operational mine, as well as mining in areas that have not previously been mined before. That’s quite a lot of work to complete in only two weeks. While it’s possible that staff at Interior got a head start on their review when Anfield submitted its mine plan last year, they have not confirmed anything to that effect since the department’s announcement about permitting the project.
Aaron Mintzes, senior policy counsel for the mining reform advocacy group Earthworks, told me the practice of approving a mine before feasibility studies have been done carries the risk of painting a misleading portrait to investors about a project’s viability.
“Every mining company does this. All of them. If you’re a publicly traded mining company and you want investors to give your mine money, you must provide a feasibility study. That’s how you know they’re telling the truth,” Mintzes said of this approach. “Investors should be upset about this.”
In an email, BLM press secretary Brian Hires told me that “feasibility studies are not legally required by BLM for mining projects.”
“The BLM continues to ensure appropriate environmental oversight including coordination with other agencies, balancing mineral development rights and responsible public lands management,” Hires stated.
On Velvet-Wood, Hires said the agency acted under “recently established emergency procedures” created under the Trump administration to quickly approve new resource projects. “The expedited review is expected to significantly contribute to meeting urgent energy demands and addressing key threats to national energy security.”
Time moves slow
Velvet-Wood is not the first mine Trump’s Interior Department has expedited so early in the approval process.
On April 8, the Trump administration gave Dateline Resources, an Australian company, a green light to build a large mine inside of the Mojave National Preserve. Like Velvet-Wood, the project, known as Colosseum, got this approval without a feasibility study. Colosseum would be a gold mine, according to Dateline’s website, which also states that the project is “prospective” for producing rare earth elements as a byproduct. The company cites previous radiomagnetic reviews by the U.S. Geological Survey and the project’s proximity of roughly 8 kilometers — or about 6 miles — from an operating rare earths mine, Mountain Pass. The company also cites decades-old information about the site from when it used to be an operating gold mine in the 1970s and 1980s.
Are there rare earths at the Colosseum dig site? There may be — but how much and how commercially useful they’d be are normally determined through a feasibility study process.
BLM approved Colosseum without any new environmental review, or at least nothing that was public at the time it made the decision known. Instead, it said in a five-sentence press statement that Dateline could rely entirely on a construction and operations plan from the previous mine, which shut down in the 1990s.
BLM’s press release also referred to Colosseum as a rare earths mine, with no mention of gold.
“For too long, the United States has depended on foreign adversaries like China for rare earth elements for technologies that are vital to our national security,” the release stated. “By recognizing the mine’s continued right to extract and explore rare earth elements, Interior continues to support industries that boost the nation’s economy and protect national security.”
Hires, the BLM press secretary, told me that the agency made this claim to highlight “the project’s potential to produce rare earth elements, which are required for economic and national security.”
On April 21, investors were informed that a “bankable feasibility study” was now “underway.” But that didn’t stop Trump from jumping far ahead of the usual process a few days later, publicly calling the project “America’s second rare earths mine” on Truth Social.
There’s a big reason this area stopped being mined, by the way: According to the National Park Conservation Association, the area is heavily restricted from mineral development under a law Congress passed in the early 1990s, the California Desert Protection Act.
There is a separate law that provides companies the ability to mine in national preserves and parks under very specific and limited conditions, and with the approval of the National Park Service, the association told me. Kelly Shapiro, an attorney representing Dateline, told E&E News in a story published last week that Interior told the company its mine plan of operations was “valid.” Shapiro also told the news outlet that “rare earths have been found at the Colosseum mine site.”
Dateline has now begun work at the mine site and conservation activists are sounding public alarms. The company did not respond to requests for comment.
Asked why BLM gave Colosseum the right to construct a new operating mine, Hires said the project site, which has not been active for decades, “is not a new mine.” He said the facility was granted the “right” to “continue mining operations” under the plan from when the site was active in the 1980s, which the agency said “includes exploration for rare earth minerals.”
A ‘critical’ issue
Before I came to Heatmap, I spent years writing about the mining industry. One of the stories I’m proudest of was an investigation into the amount of mining needed to build the vastly different energy and transportation systems we’ll need to fully decarbonize. So I can safely say this: We truly will need more minerals like lithium, copper, nickel, graphite and cobalt to decarbonize, and we might need to open more mines to get them, although recycling and technological innovation could easily reduce the tonnage required over time.
The Trump team has a different argument for mining this much. It says our country needs to wean off foreign sources of metals because relying on imports is a weakness in the eyes of hawkish security experts.
For the past decade, U.S. policymakers of both parties have rallied behind the basic notion that the country should stop relying as much on minerals from nations considered to be adversaries by the national defense apparatus, including China and Russia, as well as companies perceived to be substantially controlled by those nations. The idea first gained traction under Trump 1.0, leading to the creation of a list of so-called “critical minerals” that the military and domestically essential businesses rely on but are generally mined or refined in other countries.
Under Joe Biden, the “critical mineral” concept was magnified by multiple signature laws, including the 2021 infrastructure law and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which together established large grant and tax credit programs intended to stimulate a new American mining economy.
Trump has sped up the federal permitting process for some copper, nickel, and lithium mining and exploration projects. These commodities markets are ones in which China genuinely has an outsized influence, per national security experts, through market share and existing business relationships held by Chinese state-owned mining and refining companies.
Some of these U.S. mining projects likely would’ve been permitted no matter the outcome of last year’s election, either because their environmental impacts would be relatively limited or because they’d produce metals crucial for the energy transition that a Democrat-led government would have supported as a trade-off. Take South32’s Hermosa copper mine in Arizona, which the Biden administration fast-tracked and Trump 2.0 has signaled it will approve. A handful of these mines would supply a meaningful amount of defense minerals for which we currently rely on China, such as the Stibnite gold mine in Idaho, which would yield antimony for military-grade ammo as a byproduct.
Then there are special cases like the Resolution copper mine in Arizona, where the government’s hands are essentially tied under federal legal requirements to approve the conveyance of land to a mining company.
Other “transition metal” mining projects fast-tracked or endorsed by Trump 2.0, however, likely would not have been given priority — or even a second look — under a more neutral federal regulator. That’s because they are located in areas that officials under previous administrations fretted would produce outsized pollution risk and potentially run afoul of environmental laws.
Take for example the NewRange copper mine in Minnesota, which the company says would be the state’s only active copper mine if approved and constructed. NewRange is better known in the mining industry as PolyMet, which was its moniker for most of the nearly two decades it has been in the works. NewRange/PolyMet has struggled to get requisite permits, to the point of being referred to by its opponents as a “zombie” project, because it’s situated in an especially porous area of northern Minnesota covered in protected wetlands.
In 2022, the Environmental Protection Agency under Biden said the Army Corps of Engineers should rescind a water permit issued under Trump 1.0 because the project would violate the pollution standards of the Fond du Lac Tribe, which relies on the wet ecosystem to cultivate wild rice for subsistence and cultural practices.
At the beginning of May, the Trump administration added NewRange/PolyMet to a federal “transparency” dashboard that it says will soon have a timetable for approving the project under the same authority it fast-tracked Resolution. Representative Pete Stauber of Minnesota, whose congressional district includes the mining project, reacted in a statement that said the designation shows Trump “understands the vital importance of this project,” and that he looks forward to “seeing NewRange meet and exceed every permitting standard in a timely manner.”
This is an example of mine that, if approved hastily, would probably create new litigation just as fast.
At the risk of repeating myself, it’s not the only example of such a case, and there are more examples where the Trump administration has opened the door to new, legally risky directions on a mine.
Most notable in that pile is the Pebble mine in Alaska, which Trump halted during his first term but may be given what appears to be a last shot at survival under his new government. Decades of battle between a would-be gold mine and the denizens of Bristol Bay have dominated conversations around American mining. Opponents across the political spectrum have tried to stop the project because they fear construction would pollute the bay and its world-class fishing grounds.
The first Trump administration actually opposed Pebble after a private lobbying campaign by Donald Trump, Jr. and other conservative conservation advocates. Under Biden, the EPA issued a rare veto of the project area under a provision of the Clean Water Act. This was a step beyond simply rejecting the permit as it would, in the view of advocates, be a permanent restriction against development.
In February, the Trump 2.0 Justice Department requested a stay on the federal lawsuit filed against the veto by Pebble’s developer, Northern Dynasty Minerals, alongside top political leaders in the state of Alaska, who have argued that the agency overstepped its authority. On Wednesday, Justice Department attorneys filed a status report asking that the stay be extended for at least another month because while officials had been briefed on the subject, they “require additional time to determine how they wish to proceed.”
This indicates the government is still not ready to state its position, and leaves open a door for the Justice Department to flip sides. Northern Dynasty Minerals hopes a flip will happen. “This is an important position in any negotiation between a project proponent and a regulator, and for a process that could, hopefully, remove the veto and re-start the permitting process,” the company’s CEO Ron Thiessen said in a public statement made after the stay extension request.
It may be that even Pebble Mine is a bridge too far for Trump 2.0. But after all these other projects have gotten the skids greased, we must all wait with bated breath for the next shoe — er, pebble — to drop.
Chart courtesy of the Business Council on Sustainable Energy
