Mining industry groups are pushing Washington to revive and expand the long-dormant Bureau of Mines, a move designed to streamline the U.S. government’s regulation and support of critical minerals production and to coincide with the 2024 presidential election.
The lobbying campaign, details of which have not yet been disclosed, is set to launch before the Republican and Democratic conventions later this month. It is designed to draw a line between the scattered mining regulators in the United States and those in Australia and other countries, where senior mining regulators report directly to heads of government, three sources with direct knowledge of the campaign said.
Lithium, copper and other critical minerals are used in many electronic devices, and demand for electric vehicle batteries is expected to continue to grow in the coming years. China is the world’s largest producer or processor of many critical minerals.
U.S. mining policy is currently administered by several agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Mine Safety and Health Administration.
The agency was closed in 1996 amid budget cuts. The push to revive it and add new responsibilities, its supporters argue, would allow Washington to develop a unified policy on critical minerals in terms of permitting, research funding and grants and loans to industry that could span multiple presidencies and help the United States better compete with China.
“Currently, mining decisions are spread across multiple government agencies, making transparency and accountability very difficult,” says Rich Nolan, chairman of the industry group National Mining Association, which is leading the initiative along with the American Exploration & Mining Association and the Society for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration (SME).
The SME, which represents academics and others involved in mining, is currently working on a position paper that the other two groups will use to lobby members of Congress, one of the sources said.
While the groups acknowledged they were unlikely to succeed this year, they hoped for success in the next Congress, which meets from 2025 to 2027, the source said. There is also no estimate yet of how much money a revived office would need.
“If a new office could bring some efficiency to a duplicative and inefficient permitting process, it could be a huge benefit to the country,” said Mitch Krebs, CEO of Coeur Mining, a Chicago-based silver mining company.
Critics of this latest plan point out that the original mining agency was never responsible for approving mining projects and that there could still be opposition from conservation groups and environmental agencies.
“Reestablishing the Department of Mines isn’t going to change any of that,” says Michelle Michot Foss, who researches energy, minerals and materials at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. “There’s nothing serious that would make the mining industry any better than it is doing now.”
In addition, if the office is to report directly to the president, it would have to be placed at the Cabinet level, but this move would require congressional approval.
“We continue to promote responsible and sustainable mining through the efforts of federal agencies such as the Department of the Interior, the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense,” White House spokesman Angelo Fernandez Hernandez told Reuters.
The agency was founded in 1910 after a series of mining accidents and employed over 4,000 people until 1960. Employees inspected mines, conducted mineral-related research, studied special metals for the space age, and operated a helium separation plant that supplied NASA.
In 1996, the annual budget of $152 million was eliminated as part of a budget agreement between the Republicans and then-President Bill Clinton.
Rhea Graham, who was appointed by Clinton in 1994 as the first black woman to head the office, had only 90 days to close it.
“The closure of the office highlighted how much we as a nation value science and that its funding is more precarious than people might think,” Graham said.
(By Ernest Scheyder and Trevor Hunnicutt; editing by Richard Valdmanis, Rod Nickel and Matthew Lewis)
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