Secretary of the
Interior Doug Burgum announced Wednesday that energy projects that
usually take a year or two to obtain permits would have their permitting
processes shrunk down to as little as 28 days. The new procedures apply to a wide range of projects, including coal, uranium and critical minerals.
The announcement comes less than a week after President Donald Trump issued an executive order aimed at advancing critical mineral projects with greater transparency in the permitting and review process for 10 specific mining projects. The order sets up a Federal Permitting Dashboard to enhance interagency coordination and decision-making.
“This tool will play an invaluable role in ensuring that
these projects receive the most efficient review and authorization
process possible in order to bring the benefits of next generation
infrastructure to communities across the nation,” Manisha Patel, acting
executive director at the Permitting Council, said in a statement.
Lawfare delays
Burgum’s procedures apply to permitting processes under the
National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Endangered Species Act, and
the National Historic Preservation Act. The NEPA process alone can take several years, but litigation, economic and engineering challenges can stretch the time to open new mines by decades.
Most of the litigation comes from environmental groups, and
environmental groups are already raising alarms about the Trump
administration’s truncated review periods.
“Energy projects need to come online faster, but not at the
expense of the health and safety of our communities. Slashing the
environmental review process by this much will cause significant harm,”
Kevin Zedack, government affairs specialist with Appalachian Voices, said in a statement.
An S&P Global study last year
examined 268 average development times from discovery to production
across the globe and determined that on average, new mines in the U.S.
take 29 years to begin production.
Of the U.S. projects the researchers examined, only three
had come into production in the U.S. since 2002, while another 10 had
been in development for decades. One had been in development since 1978.
The ten projects listed in Trump’s executive order include
coal, phosphate, potash and lithium projects. Some have been in
development for decades and some are in the initial exploration phase.
It’s not clear how effective the Trump administration’s actions will be
in expediting these projects. In some cases, they may still be many
years from entering production.
Resolution Copper Project
In 1995, a copper deposit was discovered near a campground in Arizona, according to Mining.com. Nine years later, Rio Tinto and BHP co-founded Resolution Copper Company to develop the find. Some Native Americans consider the land sacred, and they began voicing their opposition.
In 2009, the company dug a 7,000-foot mine shaft, the
deepest in the U.S. The process took five years. In 2013, Resolution
Copper spent $750 million to collect engineering data, and it initiated
the federal permitting process.
In the years that followed, the opposition from tribal groups intensified. The San Carlos Apache Tribal Council voted unanimously to oppose the project. In its last days, the first Trump administration published the environmental impact statement on Resolution Copper, and years of litigation from tribal and environmental groups has followed since.
In March 2021, former President Joe Biden rescinded the
environmental impact statement. One of the lawsuits filed by tribal
groups is under consideration by the Supreme Court. If the court declines to hear the case, federal agencies will likely issue final permitting documents. If the court proceeds with review, it’s unclear how it will impact permitting.
Stibnite Gold Project
Perpetua Resource’s Stibnite Gold Project, in central Idaho, produced 90% of the antimony and 50% of the tungsten
used by the U.S. military in World War II and the Korean War. It is the
only known available non-Chinese source of military-standard antimony
trisulfide in the U.S. By 1997, all mining had ceased in the area, and
reclamation efforts began, which are still incomplete.
The U.S. Forest Service issued the final record of decision for the reopening of the mine in January, and various environmental groups are suing
to kill the project. Besides any delays created by the litigation, the
project also needs other federal and state permits before proceeding.
After that, engineering and construction can take several years.
Warrior Met Coal Mines
Alabama-based Warrior Met Coal is a metallurgical coal mining project. Metallurgical coal is used in heavy industry, such as the production of steel. The mine could produce up to $1.3 billion annually, according to AL.com. As much as 6 million tons of coal could be mined from the project by 2026, and it is expected to create 300 jobs.
The project was announced in 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which stalled it for a few years. The mine has faced legal obstacles from environmental groups who have also criticized the company’s safety record. The company disputes these claims and says it has a safety incident rate that is 32% better than the U.S. industry rate.
Caldwell Canyon Mine
In 2019, the Bureau of Land Management approved the Caldwell Canyon Mine in Idaho. The project, which is owned by Bayer subsidiary P4 Production, produces phosphate used to produce the herbicide glyphosate, found in common household gardening products such as Roundup.
The Center for Biological Diversity, Wildearth Guardians
and the Western Watersheds Project sued the BLM, and in 2023, the U.S.
District Court for the District of Idaho ruled that the BLM violated NEPA
and the Federal Land Policy Management act by failing to adequately
assess environmental harms, including impacts on the habitat of sage
grouse, a species of bird common in the West.
P4 Production is currently developing a new environmental impact statement as part of the NEPA process, which includes a new reclamation plan.
Lisbon Valley Copper Project
The Lisbon Valley Mining Company
plans to use a process called in-situ to extract copper at a project in
southeast Utah. Rather than moving large amounts of earth to extract
the material, in-situ mining pumps a solution underground,
which releases copper. It’s then pumped to the surface. The remaining
solution is treated and circulated back through the rock. The process is
repeated until it no longer recovers a viable amount of material.
Residents of the area are raising concerns about potential impacts to their groundwater, the Salt Lake Tribune reported last year. The project is in the early stages of environmental review and a permitting timeline is pending.
Lawsuits are usually based on federal permitting decisions, and any
litigation in opposition to the Lisbon project will likely follow the
completion of the NEPA process.
Silver Peak Lithium Mine
The only operating lithium mine in the U.S. is the Silver Peak Lithium Mine, about halfway between Las Vegas and Carson City, Nevada. Albemarle,
the company that owns the mine, wants to expand the operation. It began
producing lithium from brine 50 years ago using solar evaporation
ponds.
In February, the BLM published a notice of intent to prepare an environmental impact statement for the expansion, which initiated a 30-day comment period.
Michigan Potash
Three days before Biden left office, his Department of Energy issued a loan guarantee of up to $1.26 billion. The material, which is primarily used in agriculture, would be mined using the in-situ process. As a last-minute funding decision of the Biden administration, The Detroit Free Press reported, there were concerns about whether the funding would survive the Trump administration. With the project on the fast-track list, that funding doesn’t appear to be in jeopardy.
An environmental assessment review is expected to be completed by this summer, but the Free Press
reports that the project has a number of permitting hurdles to surmount
at the state level. The project, according to the DOE, is expected to
create, at its peak, 1,400 construction jobs and 200 ongoing operations
jobs. The construction, according to the outlet, is expected to take
three years, with operations beginning in 2028.
Surviving post-Trump
Trump’s list of selected projects includes a few other
exploration projects, which involve a separate permitting process from
the mining permit. As the S&P study shows, it could be decades
before any mines that result from the exploration activities come into
production.
With all these projects, even those nearly permitted,
production is likely many years away. Resolution Mine, for example,
isn’t expected to be operational until 2030, assuming the permitting process and litigation issues are resolved by then.
That means that whatever actions the Trump administration
takes to push these mines to the finish line will have to survive
subsequent administrations.
