Chris Temple, Editor and Publisher of the National Investor, joins us live at the New Orleans Investment Conference to delve into US policy around critical minerals, and to help us separate the signal from the noise from all the focus in bills and executive orders on copper, uranium, rare earths, antimony, tungsten, lithium, and other strategic metals. We’ve seen a lot of volatility in many of the related resource stocks, and so we dive into a nuanced longer-form conversation about the investing angle in these various sectors.
We start off discussing the mixed bag coming from US policy around the extraction, processing, and refinement of critical minerals and energy metals from this administration compared to prior administrations. On one hand we’ve seen positive funding measures and compressed permitting timelines emerge with initiatives like Fast-41, or the strategic position in MP Materials, or the approval of the Ambler Road for Trilogy Metals. On the other hand, Chris argues that this is far too little, too late, and that it will take a much larger concerted effort and far more funds to really move the needle on domestic supplies of critical minerals and strategic metals.
We get into the challenges around processing and refinement, being much larger problems that most policy makers realize, and without a quick fix. The question arises of how much can get realistically get done to help the extractive industries over the next 3 years, or potentially only 1 more year, depending on how mid-term elections turn out. Chris also points out that many of these initial support bills and executive orders are encouraging, but most will need follow up support and follow through policies to assist, and it remains unclear if we’ll see that pan out in the medium to longer-term.
Chris highlights discrepancies in policy and reality, like Rio Tinto’s Resolution Mine in Arizona is on the Fast-41 list, but still has huge hurtles to overcome on a state and local stakeholder level to be able to move forward. He also highlights that the Teck-Glencore JV at NorthMet in Minnesota, which is a world-class critical minerals project that has been stalled by multiple operators and government bodies and lobbyist groups for all of this century. He also highlights the government investment into Lithium Americas Thacker Pass Project as potentially misguided use of funds that will be far more capital intensive than other options would have been. Chris reminds listeners that with all those projects, if they do ever get fully approved, they would still be many years from producing more of these critical minerals.
Chris reiterates that his top commodity sector for investing is still uranium due to all the tailwinds for nuclear energy. He is also far more comfortable investing in traditional energy with oil and nat gas companies, than even some of the critical minerals for the longer-term, as we are far further from phasing out fossil fuels that people were led to believe in years past, and there are still opportunities in the energy stocks.
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Click here to follow along with Chris at the National Investor website.