critical minerals
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merri ok
SEE TRUMP KIDS DON ERIC LUTNICK BURGUM
TUNGSTEN
CONFLICT MIN? RARE EARTH?
KAZAKHSTAn trump kids, lutnick
china?
ukraine?
VENEZ ECUADOR?
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TIMES NOW?
Erik Prince’s Shadow War: How One Ambush Exposed An Expanding Mercenary Network in Congo
Authored by: Yuvraj Tyagi
Updated: Oct 10, 2026,
Erik Prince’s expanding private military operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo has come under fresh scrutiny after a deadly September ambush left former Green Beret Tim Kennedy wounded.
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The operation, led through Prince-linked companies, involves mercenaries and drones fighting the M23 rebel group, alongside mining-security and tax-recovery activities.
A deadly ambush in the highlands of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has exposed the growing scale — and mounting risks — of Erik Prince’s latest private military venture. Tim Kennedy, a former US Army Green Beret and mixed martial arts fighter, was reportedly shot multiple times on September 17 when a group of mercenaries employed by Prince was ambushed while accompanying Congolese soldiers.
Kennedy survived and was evacuated through Burundi and South Africa before being flown back to the United States for treatment at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Another member of the group, Justin Conaglen, a former New Zealand special operations soldier, was killed in the fighting.
The incident was one of several setbacks suffered by Prince’s operation as Congolese forces battle the M23 rebel group in the country’s east. Details of the ambush remain unclear, with people briefed on the incident describing a prolonged ordeal and pointing to a lack of support from Congolese forces.
How Erik Prince Built His Congo Operation
Prince, the founder of Blackwater Worldwide, has spent years pursuing private security and military opportunities in conflict-affected and resource-rich countries. In Congo, his involvement has grown substantially. According to current and former officials, military contractors and Prince employees who spoke to The New York Times, Prince signed a broad contract with President Félix Tshisekedi’s government in late 2024 covering security and mining services. The agreement was reportedly worth hundreds of millions of dollars over five years.
Prince’s company has since supplied drones and mercenaries for operations against the M23, which is backed by Rwanda. For roughly a year, contractors working for him have reportedly been based at an airfield in Kalemie, on the western shore of Lake Tanganyika.
Drone pilots from Colombia and Ukraine have carried out strikes against M23 positions, while Prince’s forces were also involved in helping Congolese forces recapture the strategic city of Uvira in January.
But the operation has come at a significant human cost.
Tim Kennedy Wounded In Deadly Ambush
Fighting intensified in the Minembwe Highlands, a rugged area in eastern Congo where government forces have been battling rebel groups. One clash earlier in September reportedly killed several Colombian contractors. Then, on September 17, another group of Prince-employed mercenaries accompanying Congolese soldiers was caught in the ambush that wounded Kennedy.
Kennedy was eventually evacuated first to Burundi and then to Johannesburg, where he received treatment at Milpark Hospital. He was later flown to the United States. Conaglen’s death has also brought international attention to the operation. The former New Zealand military serviceman had taken unpaid leave in March and formally left the service in August. His remains were returned to New Zealand and cremated on October 1.
New Zealand's foreign ministry confirmed it was providing support in the case but did not disclose further details.
Prince’s Congo Role Goes Beyond Mercenaries
Prince’s involvement in Congo is not limited to battlefield operations. His company employs around 100 people in a separate effort to recover taxes lost through fraud in the country’s mining sector. The operation involves digitising mining records and attempting to tackle what Prince’s employees describe as widespread fraud and illegal exploitation of mineral resources.
That work is taking place against the backdrop of growing US interest in Congo’s critical-mineral sector. The United States and Congo signed an agreement last December granting preferential access to American mining interests. Congolese officials have privately described the arrangement as a “peace for minerals” deal, reflecting the intersection between the country’s security crisis and competition over its mineral wealth.
Prince has also been negotiating a potential $200 million contract to protect Congo’s air force assets, according to an adviser to President Tshisekedi.
A Controversial Private Military Legacy
Prince’s return to Africa has revived questions over the record of his earlier private military ventures. Blackwater became notorious after the 2007 Nisour Square massacre in Iraq, in which Blackwater contractors killed Iraqi civilians. Prince has also faced scrutiny over operations in Libya and Somalia.
In Congo, critics argue that relying on private military contractors risks deepening instability rather than resolving it.
Armed militiamen gather near Rutshuru, 70 kms (45 miles) north of Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo.
Zobel Behalal, author of a recent report on mercenaries in the M23 conflict, described Prince’s hiring as a sign of the Congolese army’s weakness and warned that outsourcing the conflict could create more problems for the civilian population.
Prince himself has embraced a controversial view of Western involvement in Africa. In a 2024 podcast interview, he said the United States should “put the imperial hat back on” in African countries that he argued were incapable of governing themselves. Asked whether he was advocating a new form of colonialism, he replied that he was.
A Growing Private Footprint In Congo
The Congo operation illustrates how Prince’s interests have expanded beyond traditional private security. His companies are involved in military contracting, drone operations, mining-related security and tax recovery, while he is pursuing further contracts linked to Congo’s security infrastructure.
Yet the September ambush demonstrates the limits of private military power in a conflict where terrain, fragmented armed groups and the weaknesses of state forces continue to shape battlefield outcomes. American officials have said Prince’s ventures in countries such as Congo are entirely private and do not enjoy US government support. Prince has nevertheless maintained political connections in Washington, including his past financial support for Donald Trump.
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dck 10 26
Donald Trump ally seeks to snap up DR Congo mine as US brokers peace deal
jun 2025
Democratic Republic of Congo is in talks with a Texan businessman allied to Donald Trump to make a notorious source of conflict minerals a central part of US-backed peace plans for the region. Gentry Beach, the chair of investment firm America First Global and former finance co-chair of Trump’s campaign in 2016, is part of a consortium negotiating for rights to the Rubaya coltan mine, said Congolese officials and people familiar with the matter.
The mine, outside the city of Goma in eastern DR Congo, has been at the centre of the trade in smuggled coltan used in the financing of one of Africa’s longest-running and deadliest wars. Rubaya, which produces about half of DR Congo’s coltan, was captured in January by Rwandan-backed M23 rebels who have since overseen and taxed its output. The mine is considered by geologists to be one of the most commercially promising sources for the tantalum and niobium used in the electronics industry. People involved in the discussions hope, if a deal is finalised, the mine will be part of a raft of US investment underpinning the Trump administration’s novel approach to ending the fighting between DR Congo, Rwanda and proxy militias.
Washington — which has negotiated a peace settlement with the warring parties — sees dangling the prospect of billions of dollars in US investment in mining and infrastructure as key to persuading them to stop fighting, in an example of Trump’s signature transactional style of diplomacy. Rubaya was one of a number of assets the embattled DR Congo president Felix Tshisekedi touted when he first approached Washington in February offering mining rights in return for help in ending a rebellion in the country’s east, according to Congolese officials. The Rubaya mine has been controlled by different militias as the 30-year conflict has ebbed and flowed ©
Both Washington and Kinshasa have expressed hope that any deals that flow will also dilute Chinese dominance in what is Africa’s richest store of minerals. DR Congo accounts for about 70 per cent of the world’s cobalt, as well as some of the continent’s largest reserves of gold, copper, coltan, tin and diamonds. “When the US stepped in, they wanted to frame their approach to a peace settlement differently than in the past,” said one regional participant in the plans, on condition of anonymity. “They were looking at what the business and economic side of the deal would be that allows this region to prosper, so we don’t get back into this all over.”
Beach, a former hedge fund manager and long-standing college friend of Trump’s son Donald Jr, has experience in DR Congo dating back to a previous 2004 mining venture. Beach was also involved in ventures in the DR Congo with the late Congo-born basketball legend Dikembe Mutombo. Although Donald Jr and Beach are old college friends, the president’s son has no involvement in Beach’s business ventures, according to a person close to Donald Jr. America First Global, which declined to comment, is part of a consortium including the Swiss commodities group Mercuria, that hopes to develop the mine in a joint venture with Congolese state miner Sakima. Mercuria — which also did not comment — would buy offtake from the mine, which according to people involved could require in excess of $500mn in investment.
“Rubaya is an important part of the peace process . . . We hope to dramatically expand it, reorganise it, and make it a world-class example of how to do mining,” one participant of the consortium said. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. DR Congo and Rwanda on Friday signed an agreement to end the conflict, which dates back to the aftermath of the 1994 genocide in neighbouring Rwanda, when millions of refugees fled across the border. Foreign ministers from both countries signed the peace deal in Washington in what Trump had hailed on Truth Social as “A Great Day for Africa and a Great Day for the World”. But it remains unclear how the Rwandan-backed M23 rebels may be persuaded to withdraw from the swaths of territory they control, or to relinquish cash cows such as Rubaya. PLAY | 00:13 Show video description The artisanal mine at Rubaya has been at the centre of the trade in smuggled coltan © Reuters
The US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), the private sector development-lending organisation set up by Trump during his first term, may support some of the US investments as part of a separate strategic minerals agreement with DR Congo, officials have said. This economic component of the settlement — designed to herald US investment in cobalt, copper and lithium mines, as well as infrastructure — is still some way off, according to people familiar with the talks. The DFC said it “can’t comment on transactions it may or may not be considering due to commercial sensitivities”. Rubaya has become synonymous with hellish conditions and the plunder of DR Congo’s riches by its neighbours.
It has been controlled by different militias as the 30-year conflict has ebbed and flowed, with its output frequently smuggled on to international markets through Rwanda and Uganda, according to reports by UN experts. Longer term, some of the coltan mined at the site would be exported legally through Rwanda and processed for export at a new smelter in Kigali. The smelter would be built by a separate consortium made up of Mercuria, Beach’s America First Global and Rwandan state investor Ngali Holdings, according to people familiar with the negotiations. Some regional experts remain sceptical about the plans, given the central role Rubaya has played in fuelling conflict. But one person familiar with the matter argued that the deal would be “all about business building the bridges”. Additional reporting by Alex Rogers and Guy Chazan
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cato
July 6, 2026 3:01PM
A Familiar Pattern: White House Self-Dealing in US Trade & Investment Policy
By Tad DeHaven and Clark Packard
President Trump’s 2025 financial disclosure landed last week showing more than $2 billion in income, roughly triple 2024’s figure. Cryptocurrency alone accounted for $1.4 billion, most from meme-coin royalties and token sales tied to the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial. Read against the deals cataloged below, the filing paints a sordid picture of self-dealing within the upper echelons of the White House—or at the very least, the appearance of such.
Tungsten and Kazakhstan
Let’s start with tungsten. Today, China controls roughly 80 percent of the world’s supply and has spent the past year and a half tightening export controls. This has caused the metal’s cost to grow from around $340 per ton to well past $3,000. The US hasn’t run a commercial tungsten mine since 2015. Given tungsten’s importance to a number of security-related products, including weapons systems, American policymakers are actively looking to break China’s chokehold.
Over the summer of 2025, the US Export–Import Bank and US International Development Finance Corporation issued letters of interest—non-binding but meaningful signals—for up to $1.6 billion in potential financing for a Kazakh tungsten venture led by Cove Kaz Capital: $900 million from EXIM and $700 million from DFC, against total development costs pegged at roughly $1.1 billion. The joint venture itself, pairing Cove Kaz with Kazakhstan’s national mining company Tau-Ken Samruk, was unveiled in November 2025 at the C5+1 summit by President Trump and Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. President Trump personally worked out the deal with Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev; Commerce Secretary Lutnick was also heavily involved. The developer has since gone back to the well, asking the Pentagon for another $400 million.
The president’s two eldest sons found their way into the deal through a side door. According to Financial Timesreporting, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump entered the picture in August 2025 through American Ventures, an investment vehicle holding a stake in Skyline Builders, a Nasdaq-listed firm, and they added to those positions on October 28, 2025. On October 31—weeks after Lutnick met Tokayev in New York with President Trump joining by phone—investors participating through a financing structure involving Dominari Securities, a Trump Tower-based firm partly owned by the brothers, acquired a 20 percent stake in the entity tied to the tungsten project. The US-Kazakhstan agreement was signed six days later. Skyline and Cove Kaz have since agreed to combine into Kaz Resources Inc., expected to trade on Nasdaq as KAZR. The Trump brothers’ precise financial interests have not been fully disclosed.
Cantor Fitzgerald, run by Secretary Lutnick’s two sons, helped raise $210 million for one of the lead investors working with Dominari on the deal—the kind of assignment that typically produces millions in fees.
The New York Times reported that it counted $18.6 billion in federal backing for 60 critical minerals projects since President Trump took office, with the Trump and Lutnick families having some ties to at least 14 of them.
The new disclosure shows this wasn’t a one-off. Trump reported capital gains of $100,000 to $1 million on shares of MP Materials, the rare-earth miner whose stock jumped roughly 50 percent the day the Pentagon announced it was taking a 15 percent equity stake. And Donald Trump Jr.‘s venture fund, 1789 Capital, bought into Vulcan Elements in August 2025—three months before the Pentagon handed Vulcan a $620 million loan that helped push its valuation from around $200 million to nearly $2 billion. Different metal, different shell company, same shape.
Semiconductors and the United Arab Emirates
The UAE side of the ledger runs on a similar mechanism, just with chips instead of ore. As the Wall Street Journal detailed earlier this year, four days before Trump’s second inauguration, an Abu Dhabi vehicle backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan—the UAE’s national security adviser, director of the country’s largest sovereign wealth fund, and brother of the UAE’s president—bought 49 percent of World Liberty Financial for $500 million. Eric Trump signed the deal, and roughly $187 million landed in Trump-controlled accounts before anyone outside the deal knew it had happened. The CEO of World Liberty Financial is Zach Witkoff, son of Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East and key member of the administration’s foreign policy team.
Meanwhile, White House AI czar David Sacks pushed hard to loosen Biden-era chip restrictions on the UAE despite his fund’s ties to Tahnoon’s own sovereign wealth vehicle. The one senior official resisting that push, National Security Council Senior Director David Feith, was fired within weeks. Days before it would have taken effect, the administration killed the Biden export rule; by May, Washington had agreed to sell the UAE 500,000 advanced Nvidia chips a year, with one-fifth earmarked for Tahnoon’s own AI company. That same month, another Tahnoon vehicle ran $2 billion through World Liberty’s stablecoin into Binance—the exchange whose founder Trump pardoned five months later.
These private profits for Trump administration officials and their family members sit downstream of specific US international trade and investment practices, including efforts to mitigate China’s chokehold on tungsten, other rare earths, and semiconductor export controls. None of these policy goals is necessarily illegitimate on its own terms, but the means of pursuing those goals are transforming ordinary policy into family enrichment schemes.
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see ocean mining xo
Barron plans to seize the newfound opportunity. Days after the executive order, The Metals Company officially applied for approval from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to begin commercial-scale mining in international waters.
NOAA says it is "committed to an expeditious review" of the application, though an exact timeline is unclear, since the agency has never conducted such a review.
If and when The Metals Company receives approval, it will likely take at least a year to build out a full-scale mining system, according to the engineering firm Allseas.
Deep-sea nodules were first discovered more than a century ago. Now, Barron says The Metals Company is on the cusp of hauling them up from the seabed on a commercial scale: "I'm certain it will be while Trump is president." npr
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MOJO
Donald Trump’s network of family businesses—and network of US government deals with those businesses—is mind-bogglingly wide. A *New York Times*investigation reveals his sons’ latest venture: tungsten mining in Kazakhstan.
The US government recently cut a massive mining deal for the critical mineral with the government of Kazakhstan, whose leader recently said Donald Trump was “sent by Heaven.” Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr., and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s sons Brandon and Kyle, are all tied directly or indirectly to the American company, Kaz Resources, that plans to break ground on the tungsten mine. Kaz Resources is also slated to receive at least $1.6 billion in government funding.
Tungsten, a mineral widely used in missile warheads, fighter jets, and computer chips, has become increasingly difficult for the US to access since China put export restrictions on it in 2025. Since then, the Pentagon has selected contractors to build small tungsten refineries on US military bases, while also looking to expand overseas mining—because no onshore mines are currently operational, and likely won’t be for a long time. And those offshore mining deals may mean big money for Trump and Lutnick-affiliated companies: at least 14 different companies affiliated with one or both families are actively working with the federal government on critical mining deals.
The Kazakh deal was signed on November 6th, without disclosing the Trump or Lutnick families’ involvement. Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Brandon Lutnick and Kyle Lutnick were “doing business with partners in a deal that their fathers were negotiating, continuing a pattern of self-enrichment in the second Trump administration that has few precedents in American history,” Paul Sonne and Eric Lipton of theTimes wrote.
“I can see how the optics might be disturbing to some people,” Pini Althaus, the CEO of Kaz Resources, said. “But that’s unfortunate because this company and this project goes way beyond any one president, let alone any family.”
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an 12 25
President Donald Trump's Sunday night decision to name Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) as his administration's new special envoy to Greenland is already making waves around the world.
Trump posted late Sunday to his Truth Social account that Landry "will strongly advance our Country’s Interests for the Safety, Security, and Survival of our Allies, and indeed, the World," and that the Louisiana governor "understands how essential Greenland is to our National Security." Landry appears to accept the role, though he posted on his official X account that his new "volunteer position to make Greenland a part of the U.S." would not intrude on his ongoing responsibilities in Baton Rouge.
Simon Marks, who is a contributor to the United Kingdom-based iPaper, quipped that Landry's role advancing U.S. efforts in Greenland's capital city of Nuuk "won’t be easy, since so far there is limited appetite for non-stop flights between the two cities." He also observed that Trump's announcement has caused a significant amount of consternation for Denmark, which has dominion over Denmark and controls its military and foreign policy (though Greenland has its own parliament).
"Land borders and the sovereignty of states are rooted in international law," Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenland Parilament chairman Frederik Nielsen said in a joint statement. "You cannot annex other countries. Not even with an argument about international security. Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders … We expect respect for our territorial integrity."
Marks went on to note that Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen called Landry's appointment "unacceptable" and that he was "deeply angered" upon learning of Trump's announcement. Ken Howery, who is the U.S. Ambassador to Denmark (and a co-founder of PayPal) has reportedly been summoned to Copenhagen to discuss Landry's appointment.
Trump's announcement that he was putting Landry in charge of the United States' diplomatic efforts in Greenland comes as his administration continues to threaten Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, which Trump recently admitted was about "getting land" and "oil rights." Marks wrote that "Trump is indicating that his expansionist tendencies are back in vogue, especially with regard to worldwide locations that are rich in natural resources."
The iPaper columnist hypothesized that if Venezuela is about oil, Trump's efforts in Greenland may be about mineral resources. He reminded readers that Greenland was rich in 25 of 34 minerals classified as "critical raw minerals" by the European Commission.
Click here to read Marks' full column in iPaper.
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an tom dispatch long
Trump's new greed deal the ultimate act of destruction the prophets have predicted - Alternet.org
...
“The U.S. government is rushing to give away our spiritual home before the courts can even rule — just like it rushed to erase Native people for generations,” said Nosie of Apache Stronghold following the decision. “This is the same violent pattern we have seen for centuries.”
While Trump’s antagonism toward Native sovereignty isn’t surprising, it may be puzzling why his administration is so concerned with the nation’s supply of critical minerals like Oak Flat’s copper. As he’s made clear, Trump believes climate change to be a hoax invented by China, and he’s done his best to impede the growth of the renewable energy sector. Yet, like many of Trump’s other bombastic policy proposals, the undercurrents here appear more driven by ego than by ideology.
Trump’s Not Green But Greed New Deal
If Donald Trump has one defining trait, it’s his need to dominate in almost any imaginable situation. Illustrated by his falsehoods and refusal to acknowledge Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, he not only hates losing (and that’s putting it mildly!) but also refuses to concede defeat. And one thing is certain: the U.S. is losing control over the world’s mineral resources to China.
When it comes to critical minerals, the Chinese not only control most of the mines but also maintain and operate the majority of the world’s processing facilities. No other country comes close in the race for critical minerals. China finances the majority of critical mineral projects worldwide, totaling $57 billion over the past 20 years. It holds 35% of the globe’s reserves, but is responsible for 70% of their extraction and 87% of their processing on this planet.
In contrast, the U.S. relies entirely on China and other places for 12 of the 50 minerals on its “List of Critical Minerals” and is more than 50% dependent on imports for 28 more. Those minerals include metals like aluminum, cobalt, graphite, and lithium. And being “critical” doesn’t mean they are in short supply. For instance, believe it or not, the U.S. already has an excess supply of copper, which makes the proposed mine at Oak Flat all the more unnecessary and insidious. Adding to the absurdity, China’s Chinalco conglomerate holds almost 15% of Rio Tinto, so mining Oak Flat will, in the end, still benefit the Chinese.
While Biden’s Department of Energy allocated $19.5 million to increase domestic production of such minerals, $43 million to enhance battery technologies for EVs, and another $150 million to build processing facilities, that amount pales in comparison to China’s $230 billioninvestment in its EV market from 2009 to 2023 alone. Unsurprisingly, China now accounts for 62% of the world’s EVs and 77% of the batteries that power them. And it’s not just about the green tech. All those minerals shipped from China (80% of the U.S. supply) are also used as components for Artificial Intelligence and in the work of carmakers, aerospace companies, the defense industry, and others.
We know Trump doesn’t care about the climate or green energy policies, which he’s called a “scam.” Still, he understands that whoever commands those resources has the power to navigate the future of the global economy. Today, 30% of the world’s energy is produced by renewables (up 10% since 2010). Although fossil fuels still dominate, green energy is set to grow 90% by 2030. Nothing that Trump does can alter this trajectory — and now he evidently wants in.
On April 24th, the Department of the Interior, after being prodded by Trump, announced that it would eliminate environmental reviews and fast-track the development of oil, gas, and critical minerals on public lands.
“The United States cannot afford to wait,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement. “We are cutting through unnecessary delays to fast-track the development of American energy and critical minerals — resources that are essential to our economy, our military readiness, and our global competitiveness.”
Burgum was sounding the alarm, even if there was no real bell to ring. After all, the U.S. already has more fossil fuels than it knows what to do with. Weeks earlier, amid Trump’s escalating tariff war, China had retaliated by threatening to end shipments of critical minerals to the United States, all but flatlining Trump’s hopes of reinvigorating the American manufacturing sector.
There were, however, a couple of problems with Burgum’s edict (and Trump’s emergency energy decree that preceded it). First, it takes a significant amount of time to get a mine up and running (on average, 16 years), and it’s not always environmental reviews that are to blame. You need to find the resource, gather investors, and build out the necessary infrastructure, which may include roads and other facilities. None of this will happen quickly enough to offset China’s threat, even without environmental reviews. Second, although the U.S. does have a wealth of critical minerals in its backyard, it doesn’t maintain the processing facilities needed to handle them. Mining a bunch of new metals without refinement centers is an exercise in futility, akin to pumping millions of gallons of oil without the refineries to turn it all into gasoline.
Even so, this reality hasn’t stopped the over-eager Trump, who worked to cut a deal with Ukraine for access to its mineral wealth and has his sights set on nabbing Greenland’s as well. No doubt, Elon Musk, who has long criticized the U.S. for lagging behind China when it comes to mineral dominance, has been advising Trump to get a move on, even if it’s too late.
That MAGA Energy
What such critical mineral mining means for the future of the climate remains uncertain. Yet, as Trump has made clear, his insistence that the U.S. should open public lands for exploration isn’t about reducing carbon emissions at all. In fact, he’s hellbent on increasing them. It’s about bolstering U.S. capitalism, enriching mining companies, and, well, Making America (and undoubtedly Donald Trump) Great Again....
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MOJO 12 24
LONG
A $60 Billion-a-Year Climate Solution Is Sitting in Our Junk Drawers – Mother Jones
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7/20 BS national security ploy?
https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/11/15/new-market-coal-mine-critical-minerals-national-security
no lnx pix twt
Creating a New Market for Coal in the Push to Mine ‘Critical Minerals’ for National Security
Read time: 9 mins
By Laura Peterson • Friday, November 15, 2019 - 11:20
Duke coal ash pond]
With the backing of the mining industry and anti-regulatory groups, the Trump administration has been seeking to expand mining on public lands and further loosen environmental rules under the banner of weaning the United States off importing minerals deemed “critical” to national security.
This move may have particular implications for the struggling U.S. coal industry and its promoters, which have begun rallying behind efforts to extract some of these so-called “critical minerals” from coal and its by-products.
In 2017, President Trump issued an executive order demanding “recommendations to streamline permitting and review processes” for “critical minerals.” The current government list of critical minerals includes a group of rare earth elements often abundant in the waste materials from mining coal and hardrock minerals like phosphate, as well as in the coal ash produced from burning coal. But while the technology to pull these elements from such mining waste is not yet economically viable and can generate its own toxic pollutants, some see the push for it as a guise for justifying further mining.
“You’ll never make money at it,” said Kevin Ashley, a retired mining engineer and former energy policy advisor. “It’s an academic exercise that allows some people to say, ‘This is why we need to continue mining coal; so we can produce more coal ash.’”
Make Coal Critical Again?
Rare earth elements — which are not actually rare — describe a group of 17 “relatively abundant” minerals used for a wide range of technologies and products, from cell phone screens to high-power magnets to oil refining. The U.S. imports most of these elements from countries with larger deposits, including China and Russia, and Trump’s trade war with China has recently raised concerns about the nation limiting rare earth exports to the U.S.
The idea of extracting valuable minerals from coal and its waste predates the Trump administration. Coal-state politicians and industry groups such as the American Coal Ash Association have pushed the federal government to fund reports and studies on how to make the process more viable. The idea picked up some traction when Kentucky Congressman Hal Rodgers added legislative language to a 2014 spending bill directing the Energy Department to produce an “analysis of the feasibility of economically recovering rare earth elements from coal and coal byproduct streams.”
The resulting report concluded that technologies for separating rare earth elements from waste products were not yet advanced enough to be economically viable. The report also pointed out a number of environmental concerns associated with the process, such as toxicity of chemicals required for extraction, and resulting concentration of radioactive compounds like thorium.
But Trump’s entry into the White House provided these efforts with a shot of adrenaline. In addition to executive orders and other actions to increase mining activity, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management issued a prospective rule in October that would lower fees and royalty rates for companies mining critical minerals from public lands.
Despite the political push for new mining activity, a 2018 Chemical and Engineering News story says most research to recover rare earths from coal is focused on wastes, though there are some efforts to use coal itself. “The reason we are using the lignite, the coal itself, is because the rare earths are tied up in such a way that they are easy to get out,” said Dan Laudal of University of North Dakota. He also noted that using this feedstock yields “cleaner-burning, more-efficient lignite as a by-product, which can then be sold for fuel.”
At the request of Trump’s Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, the National Coal Council prepared a pair of reports which call for the revival of the floundering coal industry in part through “alternative uses” of coal, such as for rare earth elements and other “critical minerals.” The 2019 report, “Coal in a New Carbon Age,” specifically says this application, if the minerals are found in sufficient concentrations, “will create a new market for materials produced by coal mining operations.”
National Coal Council's Coal in a New Carbon Age report
The cover of the National Coal Council's 2019 report “Coal in a New Carbon Age.”
The council’s 2018 report, “Power Reset,” is focused on the coal power fleet. That report notes, “While [rare earth elements] are used in relatively small volumes, they could provide a secondary source of revenue for coal mines, or slightly boost consumption, which could potentially lower fuel costs and thus benefit the competitiveness of the existing fleet.”
The National Coal Council is a federal advisory committee funded by its sponsors, investments, and members. These include a number of coal interests, from mining and power companies to coal-reliant states like Montana and industries like steel and rail.
A notable member of the council is Fred Palmer, a longtime coal industry employee and lobbyist who began one of the very first fossil fuel–funded campaigns targeting the public understanding of climate change. Palmer now works for the climate science denial group the Heartland Institute and serves as the National Coal Council’s New Markets for Coal Subcommittee Chair. He contributed to both the 2018 and 2019 reports.
The Anti-regulatory Groups Pushing to Go 'Critical'
Anti-environmental, free market groups like the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) have made “mineral independence” from China and Russia a national security goal, which mining companies seeking a lighter permitting process have been happy to endorse.
The Committee to Unleash Prosperity (CUP), a nonprofit organization that advocates for free markets and low taxes, issued a report in 2018 titled, “An ‘America First’ Critical Mineral and Mining Strategy.” The report, while taking shots at environmental groups, argues that the United States needs to increase domestic mining on public lands — principally by loosening the permitting process — and decries U.S. dependence on China and Russia for “critical minerals.”
Wyoming coal mine
Coal mine in Wyoming. Credit: Max Phillips (Jeremy Buckingham MLC) via Beyond Coal & Gas Image Library, CC BY 2.0
CUP does not list its donors, but its board of directors boasts conservative luminaries like Andrew Puzder, President Donald Trump’s one-time nominee for Secretary of Labor, and Stephen Moore, who founded the right-wing political group Club for Growth and is a fellow with the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation. In May, Moore signed a letter asking Congress to kill the electric car tax credit, a letter sent by a coalition of free market advocacy groups with funding and ties to the billionaire Charles Koch’s oil refining and petrochemical empire.
The report downplays any risks associated with rare earth extraction, claiming the only thing trapping the rare earths in their phosphate rock is big-government regulation.
“If burdensome thorium regulations were eliminated, miners could, under controlled conditions, process waste rock for thorium and especially for rare earth minerals, which would enable the mining industry to go head-to-head with Chinese rare earth suppliers,” the report states. Thorium, a radioactive metal, is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency, and generally buried along with other waste products by phosphate miners.
Critical Corporate Interests
One of the “experts” quoted in the CUP report is Daniel McGroarty, head of the nonprofit American Natural Resources Network. According to its website, the network was established to “inform the public how dependent America is on other nations for minerals and metals that exist here,” and “encourage the exploration of key minerals and metals beneath our home turf.”
Though the network does not disclose its funders, the website identifies the organization as “A Carmot Strategic Venture.” The Carmot Strategic Group is McGroarty’s public relations firm, which he runs alongside his gig as a lecturer at George Washington University. The firm has one other employee besides McGroarty: Sandra Wirtz, who previously worked for a project of Americans for Tax Reform and the Heartland Institute.
According to his bio, McGroarty is a senior consultant for international mining company Rio Tinto, and “serves on the advisory boards of Carmot’s Critical & Strategic Metals portfolio: Texas Rare Earths Resources, Graphite One Resources, and American Manganese.”
All three companies focus on “critical minerals.” American Manganese recycles minerals from lithium-ion batteries. Graphite One is developing a graphite mine in Nome, Alaska, that Alaska Governor Michael Dunleavy asked President Trump to fast-track under another 2017 executive order that expedites environmental reviews for “high-priority” infrastructure projects. (Neither lithium nor graphite fall in the rare earth category but are on the federal “critical minerals” list.)
Texas Mineral Resources is the principal developer of the Round Top rare earth mining project in Texas. It is also one of several companies who have received grants from the U.S. Energy Department and Defense Logistics agency to create a process for extracting multiple rare earth minerals from coal waste products in Pennsylvania. The most recent grant would fund an installation in Pennsylvania developed in a consortium with Penn State's Center for Critical Minerals.
“Pennsylvania coals and coal-associated products have the highest concentrations of these rare earth elements and critical minerals in the U.S.,” said center director Sarma Pisupati. “Penn State is well positioned to play a vital role in helping industrial partners here in the state.”
Where the coal industry previously cast the use of rare earth elements in renewable energy technologies as a weakness compared to coal power, the National Coal Council’s 2019 report now boasts of coal’s potential as a source of those elements for wind and solar power.
A 2019 Department of Energy fact sheet perhaps boils down the coal and critical minerals connection to its most obvious. Along the bottom of the document, which touts a new program’s accomplishments toward domestically recovering rare earth elements, is the tagline: “Creating new jobs, products, and markets for coal.”