Ukraine gets a long-term commitment for US investment in “a free, sovereign, and secure Ukraine”. The United States gets a stake in Ukraine’s future resource potential. And Trump gets to prove that he is, to quote White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt, “the great deal maker”.

Just don’t expect a Ukrainian critical minerals rush soon.

Yulia Svyrydenko, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, posted on X that she does not expect the jointly-owned Reconstruction Investment Fund to pay out any dividends in the first 10 years.

Don’t mention the rare earths

At least everyone has stopped calling it the rare earths deal. The agreement covers all sub-soil resources, including oil, gas and a wide spectrum of metals.

Ukraine has a couple of rare earth deposits, which is not surprising given the size of the country and that rare earths are not as rare as their name suggests.

Deposits that are viable economically and technically are relatively unusual and how promising Ukraine’s are is unclear.

Even the best-mapped Novopoltavske field was last surveyed in 1982-1991. It is also inconveniently located just north of Chernihiv in Zaporizhzhia province, which is the wrong side of the front line from a Ukrainian point of view.

So are two of the touted lithium projects. Indeed, about 40% of Ukraine’s metal resources are under Russian occupation, according to estimates by Ukrainian think tanks We Build Ukraine and the National Institute of Strategic Studies.

Unlocking the full value of the minerals deal will be impossible without a definitive peace and reconciliation of Ukraine’s and Russia’s competing territorial claims.

Long road from mine to market

Ukraine has other lithium deposits and also hosts reserves of critical minerals such as uranium, titanium and graphite.

But since existing production facilities are not included in the deal and many have been closed since the start of the war anyway, Ukraine will be building a minerals production chain from scratch.

That is a long journey.

The challenge with many of the metals on everyone’s critical raw materials list is not getting them out of the ground, although that can be capital-intensive enough, but in refining them into high-purity products ready for the manufacturing process.

Rare earths’ separation and processing is notoriously tricky and dominated by Chinese operators, which is another reason why no-one’s calling it the rare earths deal any more.

Mined uranium also needs to be enriched before it can be fed into a nuclear power plant and titanium ore needs to be processed into aviation-grade alloy before it can be used to build aircraft.

It’s an inconvenient truth that Russia is one of the world’s largest titanium processors and accounted for 27% of the enriched uranium supplied to US commercial reactors in 2023.

Russia, however, is explicitly excluded from benefiting from the reconstruction of Ukraine.

Price protection

Market price is another problem.

Ukraine’s graphite deposits are both on the right side of the front line and relatively well mapped. The Balakhivske project is at the feasibility study stage, according to the Ukrainian Geological Survey.

There is a ready European market for the material needed for the anode in electric vehicle batteries.

But will mining it in Ukraine be economically viable?

Canadian miner Northern Graphite, the only producer in North America, has announced it is putting its Quebec plant on care and maintenance due to a 50% collapse in the graphite price.

China controls 70% of the global supply chain and can exert huge influence over pricing, in this case flooding the market to undermine potential competitors.

The West’s lithium ambitions are being similarly stymied by Chinese over-supply and rock-bottom market prices.

Ukraine will find that private investment will need government help to shield start-ups from price turbulence.

The United States has already understood the need for direct federal action. The Department of Defense is a strategic investor in a domestic rare earths processing project being led by Australia’s Lynas Rare Earths.

Staking the metallic future

This minerals deal is clearly going to come with a long repayment schedule.

But it is a sign of the times. As the world transitions from a fossil fuel economy to a metallic future, minerals have become the new geopolitical currency.

In this new world order China is the dominant incumbent and the West the challenger.

The United States has just made a strategic move in the great global minerals game. It will not be the last.

Next up is the Democratic Republic of Congo, where another minerals-for-security deal is on the table.

(The opinions expressed here are those of the author, Andy Home, a columnist for Reuters.)

(Editing by Barbara Lewis)

The projects – which would supply copper, palladium and other minerals – have been granted FAST-41 status, a federal initiative launched in 2015 to streamline approvals of critical infrastructure.

The Trump administration last month had named an initial 10 projects to the list and said that more would be added in the future.

All of the projects are listed on a US federal website where their permitting progress can be publicly tracked, part of what the administration calls a push for greater transparency and faster permitting.

The latest 10 include a proposed copper and nickel mine in Minnesota from a joint venture of Glencore and Teck Resources; a New Mexico uranium project from Energy Fuels; expansion of a Montana palladium project from Sibanye Stillwater; an Alaskan silver project from Hecla; and a Georgia titanium dioxide project from Chemours.

South32’s Hermosa zinc-manganese project in Arizona was fast-tracked by former President Joe Biden, the first mine to receive the FAST-41 treatment.

President Donald Trump also last month ordered a probe into potential new tariffs on all US critical minerals imports, a major escalation in his dispute with global trade partners and an attempt to pressure industry leader China.

(By Ernest Scheyder; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

Developing mines that produce strategically important minerals in countries with established mining sectors such as Canada and Australia can take 10 to 20 years, mining consultants said on Thursday.

But most mineral deposits in Ukraine have scant data to confirm they are economically viable. Investors may also baulk at funnelling money into a country where infrastructure such as power and transport has been devastated by Russia’s three-year-old full-scale invasion and future security is not guaranteed.

“If anyone’s thinking suddenly all these minerals are going to be flying out of Ukraine, they’re dreaming,” said Adam Webb, head of minerals at consultancy Benchmark Minerals Intelligence.

“The reality is it’s going to be difficult for people to justify investing money there when there are options to invest in critical minerals in countries that are not at war.”

While the financial benefits from the deal are uncertain, officials in Ukraine hailed it as a political breakthrough: They believe it will help shore up US support for Kyiv that has faltered under President Donald Trump.

Ukraine needs US support – especially weapons and cash – to withstand Russia’s military invasion.

On the US side, Trump heavily promoted the deal, especially the access it provides to Ukraine’s deposits of rare earth elements which are used in everything from cellphones to cars. So government policy could hasten investment.

The US does not produce significant amounts of rare earths and has ramped up a trade war with China, the world’s top supplier.

The text of the deal signed in Washington showed that revenues for the reconstruction fund would come from royalties, licence fees and production-sharing agreements.

The text mentions no financial terms, saying that the two sides still have to hammer out a limited partnership agreement between the US International Development Finance Corp and Ukraine’s State Organization Agency on Support for Public-Private Partnership.

The text details 55 minerals plus oil, natural gas and other hydrocarbons. According to Ukrainian data, the country has deposits of 22 of the 34 minerals identified by the European Union as critical, including rare earths, lithium and nickel.

“The transition from a discovered resource to an economically viable reserve requires significant time and investment, both of which have been constrained, not only since the onset of the war but even prior to it,” said Willis Thomas at consultancy CRU.

Ukrainian finance ministry data showed that in 2024, the Ukrainian state earned 47.7 billion hryvnias, or around $1 billion, in royalties and other fees related to natural resources exploitation.

But the joint fund created under the deal will only get revenue from new licences, permits and production-sharing agreements concluded after the accord comes into force.

Slow pace of mining licences

Ukraine was slow to issue new natural resources licenses before Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion. From 2012 to 2020, about 20 licences were issued for oil and gas, one for graphite, one for gold, two for manganese and one for copper, according to the Ukrainian geological service. There are 3,482 existing licenses in total.

Since the agreement creates a limited partnership, the two countries may be looking at direct government investment in a mining company, analysts said.

Chile, the world’s biggest copper producer and owner of state mining company Codelco, could be an example they follow, Webb said.

Another hurdle is that some potentially lucrative projects are on land occupied by Russia, and the agreement does not include any security guarantees. Washington has said the presence of US interests would deter aggressors.

Seven of 24 potential mining projects identified by Benchmark are in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine and include lithium, graphite, rare earth elements, nickel and manganese.

An official of a small Ukrainian company that holds the licence for the Polokhivske lithium deposit, one of the largest in Europe, told Reuters in February it would be tough to develop without Western security guarantees.

“The deal ties the US more closely into Ukraine in that now they’ve got a bit more of a vested interest in this war coming to an end so that they can develop those assets,” Webb said.

(By Eric Onstad, Pavel Polityuk and Christian Lowe; Editing by Veronica Brown and Cynthia Osterman)

The initiative, led by US President Donald Trump’s senior Africa advisor Massad Boulos, is designed to accompany the bilateral minerals pacts being ironed out with both nations, which would see billions of dollars of Western investments in the region.

“The (agreement) with the DRC is at a much bigger scale, because it’s a much bigger country and it has much more resources, but Rwanda also has a lot of resources and capacities and potential in the area of mining as well,” Boulos told Reuters.

DRC is currently the world’s largest cobalt producer and the leading copper producer in Africa. The country also produces nearly 70% of the world’s tantalum, extracted from coltan. Its eastern provinces hold significant reserves of tin, tungsten and additional coltan deposits.

For decades, Congo has been at odds with the neighbouring Rwanda due to ethnic tensions and control over the region’s natural resources. The conflict escalated earlier this year when the Rwandan-backed M23 rebels attacked and seized control over parts of eastern Congo, including the strategic mining hub of Walikale.

As part of the US peace mediation process, both African nations are expected to submit separate drafts of a peace agreement on Friday, with meeting scheduled in mid-May involving US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the foreign ministers of the DRC and Rwanda to finalize the accord, according to Reuters.

For the peace agreement to succeed, Boulos said several key security concerns must be addressed: Rwanda must withdraw its troops and cease support for the M23 rebels, while the DRC must address Rwandan concerns with militias like the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).

A multinational oversight committee, including the US, Qatar, France and Togo, is monitoring the progress of the peace deal, Boulos added.

MABC’s 2025 Economic Impact Study assesses the potential economic impact of 18 proposed critical mineral mines, six precious metal mines and three steelmaking coal mines.

The independent study examines 27 mining projects in advanced stages of development. Of the 27 projects assessed, 21 are new mining projects and six are extensions to existing mines.

BC mineral producers have among the lowest carbon footprints globally and are world leading suppliers of responsibly-produced materials, according to the report, essential for technologies like EV batteries, smartphones, MRI scanners, wind turbines and jet engines.

The study concludes the near-term economic impact of project construction represents over C$41 billion in near-term investment, thousands of jobs that will generate C$27 billion in labour income, and more than C$12 billion in tax revenues.

Mine construction would result in C$20 billion worth of goods and services being purchased from mine suppliers across the province, MABC said.

The study estimates the operation of these mines over several decades could reach C$984 billion in economic activity.

“BC has the minerals, precious metals and steelmaking coal the world needs. Mining has the potential to drive a new wave of economic growth – creating jobs, strengthening local and First Nations communities, and generating revenues for government services,” MABC CEO Michael Goehring said in a news release.

But British Columbia’s mining projects face challenging permitting backlogs. Last year, the province’s exploration sector had over 60 critical mineral projects waiting for permits in a C$38 billion ($27 billion) pileup of economic opportunities.

“BC and Canada must take urgent and bold action to assert our economic sovereignty amidst global trade disruptions and the potential for escalating trade wars. Persistent permitting delays must be addressed to accelerate the development of mining,” Goehring said.

Last year, Canada and British Columbia announced an investment of C$195 million ($142 million) into critical minerals infrastructure in northwest BC, aimed at bolstering development and safety within the region.

“The responsible development of BC’s critical minerals, precious metals, and steelmaking coal resources can secure BC’s economic future, resiliency and long-term prosperity. It’s time to get more mines built,” said Goehring.

The full report is here.

Launched in late 2023 by the US Department of Defense, the Open Price Exploration for National Security AI metals program is an attempt to counter China’s sweeping control of the critical minerals sector, as Reuters reported last year.

Now, more than 30 mining companies, manufacturers and investors – including auto giant Volkswagen – have joined the Critical Minerals Forum non-profit and will be its first users, according to Rob Strayer, a former US diplomat and the organization’s president.

“Everyone in the critical minerals sector is looking for more price transparency,” said Seth Goldstein, a lithium industry analyst with Morningstar. “Any tool like the CMF that could help would be welcome.”

Other members include copper miner South32, rare earths producer MP Materials and defense contractor RTX. The CMF held its first meeting with members in November. The privatization and CMF’s membership have not previously been reported.

Armed with the AI model, the CMF aims to help manufacturers curb their reliance on China by signing more metal supply deals with Western mines, according to more than two dozen industry consultants, purchasing agents, analysts, regulators and investors who told Reuters the program reflects one of the boldest efforts to date to transform the ways certain metals are bought and sold.

The goal is for the AI model to calculate what a metal should cost when labor, processing and other costs are factored in – and Chinese market manipulation is factored out – and thus give buyer and seller confidence in a deal’s economics.

Some deals with the CMF are beginning to take shape. Nevada officials this week said they would work with the CMF and its AI model to help attract copper smelting to the state. The US has only two copper smelters and as such imports nearly half of its demand for the red metal.

The program has already faced skepticism over whether it can achieve the goal of transforming the long-established ways metals are bought and sold.

Yet it is aimed less at heavily traded metals – such as aluminum – and toward lightly traded metals or metals that see heavy overproduction from some in an attempt to sway market pricing.

For example, the CMF model could help manufacturers forecast available nickel supplies in 2028 if the US were to impose a 100% tariff on that metal from Indonesia, the top global producer.

That data that could help a manufacturer determine whether to invest in a US nickel mine or agree to buy its future production, a step that would help obtain financing for a mine’s construction.

In such a scenario, the nickel buyer would use the AI model’s data to negotiate a long-term deal for guaranteed supply, regardless of whether Chinese miners boost production and drive down market prices, as they have done in recent years.

The CMF’s aim with the AI model does assume that a buyer would be comfortable paying more than the market price for a metal if supply were guaranteed.

China squeeze

The CMF’s entrance into the complex metals markets comes as Beijing restricts critical minerals exports, the very kind of market interference that the CMF officials said underscores the need to build more US mines and processing facilities to power the energy transition.

Prices on the London Metal Exchange and other futures exchanges for nickel, cobalt and some other battery metals have been dominated in recent years by overproduction from Chinese miners operating at a loss in Indonesia and Congo to boost market share.

Many niche-but-essential battery minerals on which Beijing has imposed export controls are not traded or lightly traded, including rare earths – a group of 17 metals used to make magnets that turn power into motion – as well as germanium and gallium.

In response to a request for comment about the CMF, the Chinese embassy in Washington, DC, said that China manages its exports of rare earths in accordance with rules from the World Trade Organization.

“China will continue to work with other countries to jointly undertake the responsibility of global rare earths supply,” said embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu.

Volkswagen and some other CMF members said they see the CMF as helping boost visibility into what can be an opaque critical minerals supply chain. MP Materials and RTX did not respond to requests for comment.

US President Donald Trump has already ordered his administration to work with private developers to boost US crucial minerals production, a step that could be aided by the data CMF aims to provide markets, program officials said. The president has also launched a study into potential tariffs on all US minerals imports.

Drawing on its government connections, the CMF aims to connect mining projects with potential investors and manufacturers needing more-secure metals supply, said Strayer.

Massachusetts-based rare earths processing startup Phoenix Tailings hopes the CMF can help create US-based prices for minerals tied to actual production costs, said CEO Nick Myers.

Phoenix aims to use data from the CMF as negotiating leverage with potential customers, including manufacturers that are themselves CMF members, Myers said. “In a sector that is opaque, it is one of the tools to get more information,” Myers said.

Not all market observers are convinced that the CMF’s AI model is revolutionary.

“I’ve tried to politely say I think this is worthless,” said Ian Lange, who teaches mining economics at the Colorado School of Mines. Lange contrasted the goals of the Pentagon’s AI model with the much-larger and more-complex global oil market.

“Can we predict the price of oil better now than five years ago? The answer is no. Machine learning doesn’t help,” Lange said.

‘Encourage more visibility’

The Pentagon’s AI model is being trained using more than 70 mining-related data sets and aims to guide investment decisions out for at least 15 years based on how unexpected market shocks – export restrictions, for example – could affect the production or price of a metal.

FactSet, Benchmark Mineral Intelligence and other pricing providers are supplying data, as is the US Commerce Department, officials said.

It is access to analysis of that data – some of which is not public – that the CMF says it believes sets the Pentagon’s AI program apart from ChatGPT or other AI programs.

And that data is the CMF’s biggest cost, part of the reason why the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will fund it for the next few years while the CMF determines whether to charge all members or create a tiered structure with basic members getting free access and others paying for more granular data, officials said.

S&P Global, AI developer Charles River Analytics, and software firm Exiger with price reporting agency partner Metal Miner have developed the model, according to the Pentagon.

S&P Global declined to comment. Charles River Analytics did not respond to a request for comment. Exiger said it believes its data can help forecast a material’s cost and availability and boost supply chain visibility.

The CMF has been organized as a nonprofit trade association with a board of directors comprised of its members. Its staffing is small – fewer than 10 employees – and its annual budget is not disclosed.

DARPA does not have a representative on the CMF board, but is funding the program through at least 2029 and plans to transfer the AI model’s intellectual property to the CMF by the beginning of 2027, officials said.

There are no plans to make the CMF a for-profit entity, although there may be charges in the future for access to more detailed data sets, officials said.

The CMF is launching a campaign to attract more members – especially from the semiconductor, aviation and defense industries – and offering free membership for the next 14 months while the Pentagon funds data collection, Strayer said.

Foreign governments are also studying whether to join the CMF and use its data, including copper-rich Zambia and cobalt-rich Democratic Republic of Congo, CMF officials said, adding they aim to make the program international in scope to boost metals market transparency.

The Zambian and DRC embassies in Washington, DC, did not respond to requests for comment.

As Western miners begin to demand green premiums for their metals, those new agreements increasingly require the very market intelligence the CMF model aims to provide.

“Any mechanism that can give you better modeling of markets is obviously enormously valuable,” said Brian Menell, CEO of TechMet, a mining investor and CMF member.

The AI model introduces another variable for the LME to contend with, especially as the exchange is struggling as rivals in Chicago and Shanghai try to take market share for some niche battery metals.

The LME declined to comment.

(By Ernest Scheyder; Editing by Veronica Brown and Claudia Parsons)

The following is an overview of the critical minerals, including rare earths, and other natural resources in Ukraine:

What are rare earths and what are they used for?

Rare earths are a group of 17 metals used to make magnets that turn power into motion for electric vehicles, cell phones, missile systems, and other electronics. There are no viable substitutes.

The US Geological Survey considers 50 minerals to be critical, including rare earths, nickel and lithium.

Critical minerals are essential for industries such as defence, high-tech appliances, aerospace and green energy.

What mineral resources does Ukraine have?

Ukraine has deposits of 22 of the 34 minerals identified by the European Union as critical, according to Ukrainian data. They include industrial and construction materials, ferro alloy, precious and non-ferrous metals, and some rare earth elements.

According to Ukraine’s Institute of Geology, the country possesses rare earths such as lanthanum and cerium, used in TVs and lighting; neodymium, used in wind turbines and EV batteries; and erbium and yttrium, whose applications range from nuclear power to lasers. EU-funded research also indicates that Ukraine has scandium reserves. Detailed data is classified.

The World Economic Forum has said Ukraine is also a key potential supplier of lithium, beryllium, manganese, gallium, zirconium, graphite, apatite, fluorite and nickel.

The State Geological Service said Ukraine has one of Europe’s largest confirmed reserves, estimated at 500,000 metric tons, of lithium – vital for batteries, ceramics, and glass.

The country has titanium reserves, mostly located in its northwestern and central regions, while lithium is found in the centre, east and southeast.

Ukraine’s reserves of graphite, a key component in electric vehicle batteries and nuclear reactors, represent 20% of global resources. The deposits are in the centre and west.

Ukraine also has significant coal reserves, though most are now under the control of Russia in occupied territory.

Mining analysts and economists say Ukraine currently has no commercially operational rare earth mines.

China is the world’s largest producer of rare earths and many other critical minerals.

What do we know about the deal?

The two countries signed the accord in Washington after months of sometimes fraught negotiations, with uncertainty persisting until the last moment with word of an eleventh-hour snag.

The accord establishes a joint investment fund for Ukraine’s reconstruction as Trump tries to secure a peace settlement in Russia’s three-year-old war in Ukraine.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Ukrainian First Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko were shown signing the agreement in a photo posted on X by the Treasury, which said the deal “clearly signals the Trump Administration’s commitment to a free, sovereign, prosperous Ukraine.”

Svyrydenko wrote on X that the accord provides for Washington to contribute to the fund. She also said the accord provides for new assistance, for example air defense systems for Ukraine. The US did not directly address that suggestion.

Svyrydenko said the accord allowed Ukraine to “determine what and where to extract” and that its subsoil remains owned by Ukraine.

Svyrydenko said Ukraine has no debt obligations to the United States under the agreement, a key point in the lengthy negotiations between the two countries. It also complied with Ukraine’s constitution and Ukraine’s campaign to join the European Union, she said.

The draft did not provide any concrete US security guarantees for Ukraine, one of its initial goals.

Which Ukrainian resources are under Kyiv’s control?

The war has caused widespread damage across Ukraine, and Russia now controls around a fifth of its territory.

The bulk of Ukraine’s coal deposits, which powered its steel industry before the war, are concentrated in the east and have been lost.

About 40% of Ukraine’s metal resources are now under Russian occupation, according to estimates by Ukrainian think-tanks We Build Ukraine and the National Institute of Strategic Studies, citing data up to the first half of 2024. They provided no detailed breakdown.

Since then, Russian troops have continued to advance steadily in the eastern Donetsk region. In January, Ukraine closed its only coking coal mine outside the city of Pokrovsk, which Moscow’s forces are trying to capture.

Russia has occupied at least two Ukrainian lithium deposits during the war – one in Donetsk and another in the Zaporizhzhia region in the southeast. Kyiv still controls lithium deposits in the central Kyrovohrad region.

What opportunities does Ukraine offer?

Oleksiy Sobolev, first deputy economy minister, said in January that the government was working on deals with Western allies including the United States, Britain, France and Italy on projects related to exploiting critical materials. The government estimates the sector’s total investment potential at about $12-15 billion by 2033.

The State Geological Service said the government was preparing about 100 sites to be jointly licensed and developed but provided no further details.

Although Ukraine has a highly qualified and relatively inexpensive labour force and developed infrastructure, investors highlight a number of barriers to investment. These include inefficient and complex regulatory processes as well as difficulty accessing geological data and obtaining land plots.

Such projects would take years to develop and require considerable up-front investment, they said.

(By Olena Harmash; Editing by Kirsten Donovan and Neil Fullick)

Trump may be unlikely to gain dominion over Canada or Greenland, but he’s vying to supersede the UN treaty that governs nations’ use of the ocean, potentially with far-reaching consequences for untouched and biodiverse deep sea ecosystems targeted for exploitation.

“‘The next gold rush’: President Trump unlocks access to critical deep seabed minerals,” the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration proclaimed in a press release on Friday.

Just days after Trump issued an executive order expediting the processing of seabed mining applications, The Metals Company (TMC) on Tuesday applied for a US license to extract minerals from the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, an immense region of the Pacific that stretches from Hawaii to Mexico. 

There’s a hitch, though. The Clarion-Clipperton Zone and the rest of the ocean floor in international waters falls under jurisdiction of the International Seabed Authority, whose 169 member nations plus the European Union are loath to give up their mandate to regulate deep sea mining for the benefit of humanity while ensuring the effective protection of the marine environment. 

ISA Secretary-General Leticia Carvalho on Wednesday warned that unilateral action by the US “sets a dangerous precedent that could destabilize the entire system of global ocean governance.”

At stake is not just who gets to exploit polymetallic nodules — potato-sized rocks rich in cobalt, nickel and other metals that carpet the Clarion-Clipperton seabed — or the fate of  the otherworldly deep sea life that lives on them, but the future of a treaty that has kept commercial peace on the world’s oceans for more than 30 years.

Here’s what else to know.

Who is in charge of deep-sea mining in international waters?

The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea established the ISA to regulate deep sea mining beyond national jurisdiction, with royalties on any mining to be distributed among member states. The organization, which is headquartered in Kingston, Jamaica, has spent more than a decade negotiating mining regulations with an end currently not in sight.

For more than 30 years, the ISA has forestalled a deep-sea gold rush as nations respected its mandate to first develop regulations to minimize harm from mining to unique marine life that evolved over eons in the frigid darkness of the abyss. Then TMC grew weary of waiting, saying it spent half a billion dollars on environmental assessments required to prepare an ISA mining license application.

What is The Metals Company?

TMC is a public company registered in Canada and run by Gerard Barron, an Australian former internet advertising entrepreneur. It holds two of 31 ISA exploration licenses. As ISA negotiations dragged on, company executives lobbied Trump White House officials to issue seabed mining licenses. A polymetallic nodule “was presented to the president last week and now sits on the Resolute Desk” in the Oval Office, Barron said at a congressional hearing on Tuesday. The company’s US subsidiary has applied for the US seabed mining licenses.

What is the US authority to issue mining licenses in international waters?

It’s complicated. While the Law of the Sea treaty was being negotiated, the US enacted the 1980 Deep Seabed Hard Minerals Resources Act to allow it to grant mining licenses in international waters. The idea at the time was that the law would serve as a placeholder — “an interim legal regime,” in the words of the legislation, until the treaty came into force so that companies would be encouraged to develop deep sea mining technology.

But when the Law of the Sea treaty became what is called “the constitution of the ocean” 14 years later, the US Congress declined to ratify it. Though the US isn’t a member of the ISA, it participates in the organization’s proceedings as an observer and has generally abided by  the treaty’s provisions. (The ISA reserved a permanent seat on its policymaking body for the country in case it eventually ratifies the treaty.) With his executive order, Trump reversed the US government’s longstanding position, upending multilateral deliberations about deep-sea mining. TMC is the first company to apply for a mining license under the 45-year-old US seabed mining law.

Doesn’t TMC already hold ISA exploration licenses?

Yes, and what’s fueling outrage among the diplomatic corps is that TMC wants US permission to mine an area it licensed from the ISA under the sponsorship of Nauru, a tiny and impoverished Pacific island nation to whom the company has agreed to pay royalties under its ISA contract. TMC declined to comment on whether those obligations to Nauru remain if it is issued a US mining license. Even as it seeks a US license, the company still plans to apply for an ISA mining contract in June, despite the absence of mining regulations.

How has the ISA responded to Trump and TMC?

Member nations are divided over whether deep sea mining should proceed but agree that the ISA is the sole authority empowered to make such decisions. “Circumventing the regulatory authority of ISA not only breaches international law, but also erodes trust, exacerbates global inequality and silences the voices of least developed countries,” the ISA said in a statement released after Trump signed the executive order.

What happens next?

TMC said it expects the initial US review of its mining application to be completed within 60 days. Matt Giacona, the acting principal deputy director of the US Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, said that other deep-sea mining application reviews, such as for exploration licenses, will move faster. “These new permitting procedures will reduce a multi-year process down to just 28 days upon request by project applicants,” he said at a press briefing last week.

That timeline worries deep-sea biologist Diva Amon. “It will likely prevent robust assessment of whether environmental obligations will be fulfilled,” said Amon, a science advisor to the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory at the University of California at Santa Barbara. “Currently we know little about the animals inhabiting the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, including their ecology and how they will cope with the potential impacts of deep-sea mining.”

TMC has previously said it expected to begin commercial mining in 2026 if it obtained an ISA license. While the company tested a small-scale prototype of a nodule mining machine in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in 2022, it will need to secure a full-size commercial version capable of operating continuously under crushing pressure and ice-cold conditions.

Where would nodules be processed?

The US has no current capacity to process and refine the minerals contained in nodules into metals suitable for making electric car batteries and other products. A Japanese company has conducted processing trials for TMC but building industrial-scale operations for nodules could require billions of dollars in investment. “Polymetallic nodules are a unique resource, and there is no proven processing technology that can recover all four saleable elements contained in them,” stated an April RAND report on seabed mining.

(By Todd Woody)

The Kremlin was silent on Wednesday’s agreement, but former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said it meant Trump had “broken the Kyiv regime” because Ukraine would have to pay for US military aid with mineral resources.

The accord, which was signed in Washington and heavily promoted by Trump, establishes a joint investment fund for Ukraine’s reconstruction as the US president tries to secure a peace settlement in Russia’s three-year-old war in Ukraine.

The agreement grants the US preferential access to new Ukrainian minerals projects. It is central to Ukraine’s efforts to mend ties with the White House, which frayed after Trump took office in January.

The deal will show the “Russian leadership that there is no daylight between the Ukrainian people and the American people, between our goals,” US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox Business Network in an interview.

“And again, I think this is a strong signal to the Russian leadership, and it gives President Trump the ability to now negotiate with Russia on even a stronger basis,” he said.

His remarks appeared to send a signal to Russia that Washington remains aligned with Kyiv despite question marks over its commitment to its ally since Trump’s return to power upended US diplomacy.

The Ukrainian parliament must still approve the pact.

Ukraine’s First Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko, who signed the accord, told reporters in an online briefing that would happen in the next few weeks.

“We want to ratify it as soon as possible. So we plan to do it within the coming weeks,” Svyrydenko said, adding that some technical details had to be completed before a joint US-Ukraine investment fund could become operational.

“We really need to be more sustainable and more self-sufficient, and this is a real tool that can help us achieve this goal,” she said.

Ukraine’s Economy Ministry said the two sides did not expect the agreement to begin generating revenue this year.

Vatican talks were key

Senior Trump administration officials said three agreements had been signed – a framework deal and two technical accords – and that they expected Ukraine’s parliament to approve them within a week.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he hoped there would be no delays in securing parliament’s approval, although some lawmakers said they expected it to take longer than a week.

Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal met parliamentary factions at a closed meeting on Thursday. Some members complained they had not seen the text of the agreement or been properly consulted.

“The agreement has changed significantly in the preparation process,” Zelenskiy said in a video posted on Telegram, hailing what he called a “truly equal agreement” that created opportunities for investment in Ukraine and the modernization of industry and legal practices in his country.

He and Bessent both underlined that talks between Zelenskiy and Trump in Rome during Pope Francis’ funeral on April 26 played an important role in securing a deal.

“In fact, now we have the first result of the Vatican meeting, which makes it truly historic,” Zelenskiy said.

Kyiv has been highly dependent on US military supplies since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 and says Moscow has intensified attacks on Ukraine since the US stepped up efforts to secure a peace settlement.

Washington has signalled its frustration with the failure of Moscow and Kyiv to agree on terms, and Trump has shown signs of disappointment with Russian President Vladimir Putin for not moving faster towards peace.

Medvedev, who is now a senior security official in Russia, suggested Ukraine had been forced into the agreement.

“Trump has broken the Kyiv regime to the point where they will have to pay for US aid with mineral resources,” he wrote on Telegram. “Now they (Ukrainians) will have to pay for military supplies with the national wealth of a disappearing country.”

Ukraine’s international debt rallied after the signing of the deal, which financial analysts said had come with better terms for Ukraine than they had originally thought likely.

Ukraine is rich in natural resources including rare earth metals used in consumer electronics, electric vehicles and military applications, among others. Global rare earth mining is dominated by China, which is locked in a trade war with the US after Trump’s sharp tariff increases.

Ukraine also has reserves of iron, uranium and natural gas.

(By Doina Chiacu, Susan Heavey, David Lawder, Anastasiia Malenko, Tom Balmforth, Karin Strohecker, Yuliia Dysa and Timothy Heritage; Editing by Philippa Fletcher)

Following the company’s annual general meeting in Perth on Thursday, chief executive Jakob Stausholm said the board had discussed rare earths this week and would take a “serious look” at their potential role in Rio Tinto’s portfolio.

Stausholm said that as the company continues to optimize its iron ore operations in the Pilbara and advances developments like the Simandou iron ore project in Guinea, it’s also reshaping its aluminum, copper, and lithium businesses to support the energy transition.

“So you could say, the next thing is to look a little bit deeper on critical minerals, and you have to think about that, not necessarily as separate mines,” Stausholm told reporters. He noted critical minerals are often present in Rio’s existing operations as a by-product, so “it’s a question of whether we should process them more deliberately.”

Rio Tinto already produces scandium as a by-product of titanium dioxide in Quebec and is weighing the production of gallium from its aluminum operations. Stausholm noted that the absence of a robust spot market for many critical minerals means Rio must ensure demand before scaling up production.

Chairman Dominic Barton echoed the cautious approach, pointing to the limited scale of the sector. “That’s why you don’t typically see the top five [largest miners] in this space,” he said. But with global supply chain diversification becoming a priority, Barton said they are asking themselves whether they should revisit what they already have and assess the economics.

Barton also said critical minerals could help strengthen Rio’s social licence to operate. “It’s interesting how often those with fewer resources are the most vocal,” he added.

Tariffs, Canada and the aluminum market

On tariffs, Barton said Rio could compete under the current global framework, though the company isn’t enthusiastic about trade barriers. “We’re not excited about tariffs, but we’ve got to live with what governments are doing,” he said, adding that if they’re applied uniformly, the company “would manage” because of its position on the cost curve.

Barton welcomed the recent Canadian election results, suggesting they provided a mandate for continued negotiations. He praised the country’s recognition of aluminum’s economic importance, especially given Rio’s workforce in Canada.

As a former Canadian ambassador to China, Barton said China’s economy could absorb short-term tariff impacts.

“Urbanisation, GDP consumption rates, and green infrastructure investment all support long-term steel demand,” he said. “We expect a new equilibrium despite near-term discomfort.”

Working in the US

Stausholm highlighted Rio’s significant presence in the US, including the Kennecott copper mine and smelter in Utah, a boron mine in California, and the Resolution copper project in Arizona.

“The US government is very, very keen on seeing us getting the most out of those assets, so it provides opportunities to serve the US government,” Stausholm said.

He added that tariff policies wouldn’t necessarily affect Rio’s long-term investment decisions. Last month, the US government fast-tracked permitting for the Resolution project, and Stausholm said the joint venture with BHP (ASX: BHP) is moving forward.

“Unlike Australia, the US has seen limited mining development in recent decades—this represents a shift”, he said.

Activist campaign fails

A proposal from UK-based hedge fund Palliser Capital to force a review of Rio’s dual-listed company (DLC) structure failed to gain traction. The company rejected the motion, with Barton stating the board had already reviewed the structure in detail last year with advice from five external consultants.

“All of this work showed that a unification of the DLC would be value destructive for the group and its shareholders,” Barton said.

Only 19.35% of shareholders supported the motion. Under UK law, a 75% majority is required to mandate a review, while 20% support would have have required the company to engage further with shareholders.

The agreement “signals clearly to Russia that the Trump administration is committed to a peace process centered on a free, sovereign and prosperous Ukraine over the long term,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement late Wednesday.

Ukrainian Economy Minister Yulia Svyrydenko also confirmed the deal on social media. In a post on X, she wrote: “Together with the United States, we are creating the Fund that will attract global investment into our country.”

The deal, as first reported by Bloomberg News, will grant the US priority access to new investment projects involving critical materials such as aluminum, graphite, oil and natural gas. It also establishes a reconstruction fund, managed by Washington, through which profits will be funneled.

The fund is intended to support Ukraine’s recovery and offset future US military assistance, the draft of the agreement reads.

Trump’s 100th day

The announcement comes as US President Donald Trump marks the first 100 days of his new term, amid mounting pressure to deliver foreign policy wins and restore his political standing. Trump, whose support Kyiv views as critical to any potential truce with Moscow, has expressed frustration with the pace of ceasefire negotiations.

“We made a deal where our money is secure, where we can start digging and doing what we have to do,” Trump told a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday. “It’s also good for them because you’ll have an American presence at the site … that will keep a lot of bad actors out.”

The agreement follows weeks of negotiations, including a visit by Ukrainian officials to Washington earlier this month. Talks had stalled over technical details until the sides agreed to finalize all components of the deal simultaneously.

Earlier in the day, the Financial Times reported the deal had hit a last-minute snag, with issues arising related to governance, transparency mechanisms and the traceability of funds.

Resource partnership

The reconstruction fund is designed to facilitate future cooperation in energy and resource development, including mining and technology. Kyiv views the pact as a strategic step toward its long-term goal of joining the European Union—an issue Ukraine insisted must not be compromised.

According to Reuters, while the agreement gives US preferential access to new Ukrainian natural resources deals, it would not automatically hand Washington a share of Ukraine’s mineral wealth.

US officials said that the deal does not require Ukraine to repay past military aid, estimated in the billions of dollars since Russia’s full-scale invasion began over three years ago. Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal confirmed that Washington had dropped its earlier demand for retroactive compensation.

“This economic partnership positions our two countries to work collaboratively and invest together,” the US Treasury said.

Rare earths are a group of 17 metals used to make magnets that turn power into motion for electric vehicles, cell phones and other electronics.

The existing standard to refine these minerals, known as solvent extraction, is an expensive and dirty process that gradually became unpopular in the United States after it was developed in the 1950s but one that Chinese companies have mastered.

China’s exports of rare earths have ground to a halt, fueling a scramble across the West for replacements. Phoenix says its process can produce rare earths from mined ore or recycled equipment with little to no emissions.

Sumitomo’s Presidio venture arm, along with Builders Vision, Yamaha Motor, and venture capital funds Envisioning Partners, MPower and Escape Velocity, joined a $33 million tranche for Phoenix’s Series B funding round, which closed on April 25, the company said.

Phoenix declined to disclose each investor’s funding.

The company will use the funding as part of its construction of a $13 million facility in Exeter, New Hampshire, that can produce 200 metric tons of rare earths annually initially and should open later this year.

The company last December closed a first tranche of its Series B round worth $43 million, bringing the total round to $76 million.

A $10 million Series A funding round closed in August 2021.

(By Ernest Scheyder; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

USAR is currently finishing the construction of a 310,000-square-foot facility in Stillwater, Oklahoma — also known as Innovation Lab — which it officially opened in late March, having already produced the first batch of sintered magnets earlier in the year.

The plant is designed to replicate the complete rare earth magnet production process, the company said. Following the recent commissioning, it will begin producing protypes for customers ahead of commercial operations in 2026.

At full capacity, the state-of-the-art facility is expected to produce 5,000 tonnes, or hundreds of millions of magnets annually, according to company estimates.

The company, which debuted on the NASDAQ mid-March, previously said that it would invest $100 million in the manufacturing facility.

As part of a vertically integrated supply chain strategy, USAR holds the Round Top deposit in West Texas, where it produced its first sample of dysprosium oxide in January.

The company has said it aims to bring the deposit towards production around the same time as the Oklahoma plant.

The $75 million funding was made via a private investment in public equity (PIPE), the company said.

“This sizable commitment from a single institution allows us to fully fund the capex required for the first phase of our rare earth magnet facility,” USA Rare Earth CEO Joshua Ballard said in a statement.

He also highlighted this as a “pivotal moment” in the company’s push to build what would be one of the largest sintered rare earth magnet facilities in the US.

Under the PIPE transaction, the investor would acquire 8.55 million shares of common stock, pre-funded warrants to purchase another 2.16 million shares and warrants to purchase the combined total number of shares at a strike price of $7.00 per share.

Despite the funding, USAR fell 18.3% at market close to $10.51 apiece, close to where it traded at when it first listed. The stock decline gives the company a market capitalization of $861.3 million.

According to Chinese state media, a group of scientists recently managed to refuel a working thorium molten salt reactor without causing a shutdown — a feat never achieved before. The success was announced by the project’s chief scientist Xu Hongjie during a closed-door meeting at the Chinese Academy of Sciences on April 8, Chinese news outlet Guangming Daily reported last week.

Such a breakthrough could be transformative to the global energy landscape, as thorium has long been hailed as a far safer and cheaper alternative to uranium in nuclear reactors. While also a radioactive element, thorium produces less waste, and the silver-colored metal, mostly found in monazite, is much more common in the Earth’s crust.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), thorium is three times more abundant in nature than uranium, but historically has found little use in power generation due to the significant economic and technical hurdles.

China takes lead

The latest announcement in China represents a key step in removing some of the hurdles. In the April 8 meeting, Xu said China “now leads the global frontier” in nuclear energy, as cited by Guangming Daily.

The reactor used by Xu’s team is a prototype located in the Gobi Desert, known for its rich endowment of minerals such as uranium and rare earths. The experimental unit is able to generate 2 megawatts of thermal power, using molten salt to carry the fuel and manage heat, with thorium serving as its fuel source.

Compared to uranium, thorium can generate a significantly higher amount of energy via nuclear fission. A Stanford University research estimates that thorium’s power generation could be 35 times higher. Thorium molten-salt reactors (TMSRs) are also compact, do not require water cooling, cannot experience a meltdown and produce very little long-lived radioactive waste, according to the IAEA.

When announcing the breakthrough, Xu acknowledged that its project was based on previous research by US researchers who pioneered molten salt reactor technology in the 1950s, but abandoned shortly after to pursue uranium-fueled ones.

Xu — who was tasked with the thorium reactor project in 2009 — told Chinese media that his team spent years dissecting declassified American documents, replicating experiments and innovating beyond them.

Vast thorium supply

The technology breakthrough follows a report earlier this year that China’s thorium reserves, already known as the world’s largest, may actually be bigger than previously estimated, according to a national survey cited by the South China Morning Post in February.

In the report, scientists claim that the Bayan Obo mining complex in Inner Mongolia, which is the world’ s largest rare earth producer and has a huge amount of thorium in tailings, could yield 1 million tonnes of thorium – enough to fuel China for 60,000 years.

The Chinese government has long aimed to harness the power-generation potential of thorium, which it sees as part of the nation’s strategy to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. The country, as the world’s-second-largest carbon emitter, has reportedly been working on thorium-fueled reactors since the 1970s.

Last year, China approved the construction of the world’s first thorium molten-salt reactors in the Gobi Desert. These are larger than the one used in Xu’s project, and are expected to generate 10 megawatts of electricity starting in 2029.

The landmark agreement would grant Washington preferential access to new Ukrainian mineral and energy projects in exchange for future investment and military assistance, as reported by multiple media outlets.

According to unnamed sources cited by the Financial Times, Ukraine’s Minister of Economic Development Yulia Svyrydenko, who arrived in Washington on Wednesday, is aiming to revisit some of the terms that were initially agreed upon over the weekend.

The sticking points, according to sources cited by the Financial Times, revolve around governance, transparency mechanisms and the traceability of funds. In response, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and his team warned that Svyrydenko should “be ready to sign all agreements, or go back home”.

However, Ukraine refuted the American version of the events, adding that the only reason why they could not sign all the documents on Wednesday was because the fund agreement, which would complete the full minerals deal, must be ratified by the country’s parliament first.

A draft of the deal, previously reviewed by Reuters, indicates that it includes the establishment of a joint US-Ukrainian reconstruction fund, which would receive half of the profits and royalties earned by Ukraine from newly issued natural resources permits.

While this arrangement does not transfer direct ownership of assets or infrastructure, it ensures that the US — or designated entities — would have first access to new licenses and projects.

The draft clarifies that existing mineral or energy contracts will not be affected, and earlier proposals that would have given the US influence over Ukraine’s gas infrastructure have been dropped, Reuters reported.

In parallel reporting, Bloomberg said the deal’s scope includes development opportunities across a range of critical commodities such as aluminum, graphite, oil and natural gas. According to officials familiar with the process, the agreement has been in the works since February and will require ratification by Ukraine’s parliament.

As part of the arrangement, the US has agreed that only future military aid will count toward its contributions to the fund.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal confirmed this change on Sunday, noting that previously delivered assistance—worth tens of billions of dollars—will not be monetized under the new framework.

Shmyhal described the agreement as a “strategic investment partnership” to rebuild Ukraine and foster its long-term development. “It is truly an equal and beneficial international agreement,” he told Ukrainian television on Wednesday, according to CNN.

US President Donald Trump has linked the mineral partnership to broader questions around Ukraine’s ability to “repay” Washington for its support since Russia’s 2022 invasion.

The deal also aligns with Trump’s broader push for a negotiated ceasefire. However, progress on that front remains stalled as Russia demands complete control over contested eastern Ukrainian regions.

Despite the high-level tensions—including a failed signing attempt in February following a contentious Oval Office meeting—Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and President Trump appear to have restarted dialogue. The two met privately at the Vatican over the weekend during Pope Francis’s funeral.

Ukraine claims to hold nearly $15 trillion worth of mineral resources, making it one of the most resource-rich nations in Europe. The country is home to the continent’s largest reserves of lithium, titanium, and uranium.

Defense Metals is currently developing the Wicheeda rare earth element (REE) project in British Columbia. The property is located about 80 km northeast of the city of Prince George, covering an area of 118 sq. km.

“The interest shown by our potential strategic partner reflects growing industry confidence that Wicheeda could indeed become a strategically important source of rare earth elements based on the convincing results of our detailed pre-feasibility study published earlier this month,” Defense Metals CEO Mark Tory said in a news release.

“We still have a lot of work to do to turn our project into reality, but this MOU is certainly a major step in the right direction,” he added.

The company recently completed a preliminary feasibility study that demonstrated robust economics for the project, including an after-tax net present value of $1 billion, using an 8% discount rate, and an internal rate of return of 18.9%.

The Wicheeda REE deposit is estimated to hold 34 million tonnes of measured and indicated resources grading 2.02% total rare earth oxides (TREOs), for nearly 700,000 tonnes of TREOs.

Fast-tracking approvals

Carney’s administration plans to establish a “Major Federal Project Office” with a “one project, one review” mandate. This initiative aims to streamline environmental assessments by eliminating duplication between federal and provincial processes, thereby accelerating the approval of mining projects. Such a move is poised to benefit companies involved in critical mineral extraction, including lithium, nickel, and cobalt, by reducing bureaucratic delays.

Carney has not provided clarity on how the consent process would be expedited to meet the timeline pressures of energy and infrastructure development. This ambiguity is notable, particularly as his promise to avoid forcing projects through appears to contradict his assurances that major projects will proceed swiftly. Past provincial experiences, such as B.C.’s attempts to expedite development under similar consent commitments, suggest that balancing these priorities is fraught with legal and political difficulty.

Carney’s approach implies an acknowledgment of a de facto Indigenous veto over resource projects—but rather than confronting this head-on, he proposes to “buy in” Indigenous participation through public financing mechanisms. This creates a practical route around a hard veto by offering Indigenous communities ownership stakes that align their interests with project success.

Reconciling the urgency of certain projects with the potentially time-consuming process of obtaining consent from multiple Indigenous nations will prove tricky. It begs the question of whether or not this model serves the public interest.

On one hand, it represents a constructive shift from conflict to partnership, promoting reconciliation and potentially leading to more stable and inclusive development. It avoids the legal and ethical risks associated with imposing projects on unwilling nations. On the other hand, it raises questions about the use of taxpayer-backed funds as a means of securing project approval. There is a risk that such financing becomes a permanent cost of doing business, even for projects that may not deliver strong returns to the public.

Whether this is sustainable or fair depends on how transparent and equitable the resulting arrangements are — and whether public funds are being used to create true partnerships or merely to neutralize opposition.

Investment in critical minerals

The Carney-led government plans to invest in the development of critical minerals by: 

• Connecting critical mineral projects to supply chains via the new First and Last Mile Fund (FLMF), enhancing integration within the Canadian economy;
• Supporting clean energy and critical minerals projects through the FLMF to reduce reliance on other countries and protect Canadian jobs;
• Accelerating exploration and extraction, including from recycling, by investing in prospecting activities and 
• Attracting and de-risking investment in critical mineral exploration and extraction through additional investments and expanded tax credits. 

US tariffs

In response to US President Donald Trump’s imposition of tariffs on Canadian imports, Carney has pledged a firm stance. His administration plans to invest billions to reduce Canada’s economic dependence on the southern neighbour, including a $2 billion strategic response fund to protect Canadian workers and fortify the auto supply chain.

This shift towards trade diversification and economic resilience is likely to open new markets for Canadian mining exports, particularly in Asia and Europe, thereby reducing vulnerability to US trade policies.

Energy superpower

Mark Carney’s campaign message on energy, echoing Stephen Harper’s “energy superpower” mantra, signals a sweeping ambition — but with a broader, more climate-conscious twist. In his election night speech, Carney declared it was “time to build Canada into an energy superpower in both clean and conventional energy” and pushed for an industrial strategy that boosts competitiveness while addressing climate change.

Now leading a Liberal government, Carney faces the challenge of balancing economic growth with environmental responsibility. His platform includes plans for national “energy corridors” designed to fast-track approvals for infrastructure such as pipelines and transmission lines. He has also pledged to streamline regulatory processes to reduce delays that have long hindered energy and resource development.

Carney supports carbon capture and storage technology, a key strategy for the oil and gas sector to reduce emissions. His promise of federal backing extends to major infrastructure and extraction efforts, notably the Ring of Fire in northern Ontario. The region is rich in critical minerals essential for electric vehicles, batteries and other technologies vital to a low-carbon economy.

Some First Nations groups with claims in the area oppose development, which could take a decade to implement judging by other projects. Environmentalists say it will release the same global warming gases from the region’s muskeg that the electric-battery vehicle metals it would produce are supposed to limit.

Canada’s elected Prime Minister has also committed to advancing transportation and energy projects in the Arctic, paired with a planned expansion of the country’s military presence in the region.

Environmental commitments

While promoting mining development, Carney’s administration also maintains environmental commitments, such as upholding the industrial carbon tax and imposing caps on oil and gas emissions. This approach aims to ensure that mining growth aligns with Canada’s climate goals. 

Despite facing challenges such as taxation, immigration and political influences, including Trump’s rhetoric, Canada’s natural resource development was a common topic brought up by the two main political parties.

Carney’s recent victory signals a proactive approach to strengthening Canada’s mining industry, a significant contributor to the country’s economy. The sector accounted for nearly 20% of the country’s gross domestic product in 2022, alongside C$422 billion ($305 billion) in exports.

PM and Liberal Party head Mark Carney, who’s leading in the polls, has pledged to approve resource projects within two years and broaden exploration tax credits as part of a plan to make Canada both an “energy superpower” and “the global supplier of choice for critical minerals.”

Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, meanwhile, has vowed to open a resource-focused project office with an even shorter time limit – one year – to get “shovels in the ground” as fast as possible.  He also says he’ll build long-discussed infrastructure for Ontario’s Ring of Fire region, a set of three new roads and power lines linking future mines with the southern road network. Even so, his platform is thin on details about mining.

“Both parties would unlock stronger growth via major infrastructure and resource development, but each differs in approach,” Scotiabank Economics Vice President Rebekah Young said in a report issued Friday. “A complicated jurisdictional landscape, compounded now by global uncertainties, means either party would have its work cut out to spur greater investment.”

Critical minerals and industrial metals have emerged as essential economic building blocks in recent years as the world gears up for the coming energy transition. In the United States, President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order to increase American critical mineral production to dent China’s dominance after launching a Section 232 probe on all critical mineral imports – a process that typically results in tariffs.

‘Energy superpower’ goal

“Making Canada an energy superpower starts with critical metals and minerals, vital components to build everything from solar panels to electric vehicles,” Carney said last week during a campaign stop in Vancouver. “The market for these minerals is currently dominated by China and Russia. That must change.”

In his first election campaign, Carney has pledged to “kick-start” the “clean energy supply chain” by investing in critical minerals, spurring private investment and supporting early-stage mining companies.

If elected, Carney is proposing to adopt “Buy Canada” standards for products such as steel and aluminum while putting an increased focus on feedstock for battery supply chain buildouts.

First and Last Mile

A key measure included in the 67-page Liberal platform is the creation of the First and Last Mile Fund, an investment vehicle that Carney says will connect critical mineral projects to supply chains by supporting on-site development, processing and refining capacity.

Carney also wants to broaden the Critical Mineral Exploration Tax Credit by including critical minerals necessary for defence, semiconductors, energy and clean technologies to the list of qualifying minerals.

A Liberal government would also expand eligible activities under Canadian exploration expenses to include the costs of engineering, economic and feasibility studies for critical minerals projects.

“All of these measures taken together will make Canada the global supplier of choice for critical metals and minerals,” Carney said.

Repealing obstructive laws

Poilievre, Carney’s main rival for the top job, has vowed to repeal various policies passed under former Liberal prime minister Justin Trudeau – including the Impact Assessment Act known as Bill C-69.

He calls Bill C-69 the “No More Development” law, saying it “makes it impossible to build the mines, pipelines and other major energy infrastructure Canada needs.” Removing it would trigger a boom in the country’s resource sector, he says.

“We will get big projects built again by repealing the Liberal anti-development laws and regulations that have cost us half a trillion dollars in lost investment over the last decade,” Poilievre said in a campaign document posted on his party’s website. “We’ll also work with Indigenous partners to process and sell our clean natural resources to get foreign countries off burning higher-emission fuels and fight climate change.”

Although the 30-page Conservative platform has a section on Canadian energy and resources, “mining” and “minerals” don’t appear at all in the document. The word “mines” is mentioned once.

If he becomes PM, Poilievre has vowed to accelerate priority resource projects and usher in “One and Done” approvals. He would create a single Rapid Resource Project Office to streamline all regulatory approvals into one application and environmental review, in cooperation with the provinces, with a target of six-month decisions and a one-year maximum timeline.

Fast-tracking projects

A key pledge for miners involves building the infrastructure project to Ontario’s Ring of Fire region, which is known for its vast potential but slow progress towards getting any mines built. A Conservative government would approve federal permits to harvest chromite, cobalt, nickel, copper and platinum in the area, Poilievre says.

In the Conservative leader’s view, these measures would give the Canadian economy a boost of several billion dollars, “allowing us to become less dependent on the Americans, while our allies overseas would no longer have to rely on hostile regimes for these metals, turning dollars for dictators into paycheques for our people.”

The US president has put pressure on Kyiv by threatening to stop the flow of military supplies to help it fight Russia’s invasion unless the US gets some payback for the billions of dollars the aid is costing.

But the deal is sensitive for Ukraine, which has a proud history of mining coal and iron ore and hopes to exploit seams of increasingly sought-after rare earths. Mineral revenues are a crucial pillar of the state budget.

In the city of Kryvyi Rih, on whose outskirts open-cast iron ore mines have gouged huge craters in the landscape, 71-year-old pensioner Oleksandr had little time for Trump: “You can’t trust that ginger guy, he’s not that kind of person.”

“From what I can see, they only want to take, not to give,” he said as he shopped near the UGOK iron ore mining and processing plant.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, himself from Kryvyi Rih, said on Monday the negotiations on creating a mineral revenue fund from which the US would draw had made progress since a memorandum of intent signed on April 18:

“The document has become much stronger – more equitable – and could be beneficial to both our peoples, for Ukraine and for America.”

‘Minerals belong to the people’

Zelenskiy knows he must win Trump over after a difficult relationship so far, but that there will be uproar at home if he makes a bad deal.

About 60 km (40 miles) north of Kryvyi Rih is the town of Zhovti Vody – or “yellow waters” – where uranium and iron ore were mined for decades.

“I hope that the people who are involved in this think about Ukraine and its people, because our mineral riches belong to the people,” said 71-year-old resident Nina Fesenko.

Olga Marynska, 68, said she hoped the government would prevent Ukraine being exploited.

“We don’t have to give them everything,” she said. “I don’t think we have to do it in such a way that they take everything out of that fund.”

Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said on Sunday that there was now agreement that the deal would not seek to pay for US aid provided to Kyiv in the past.

That may help to reassure Ukrainians who feel they have battled Russia since 2022 not only for themselves but also on behalf of the West: the US-led NATO defence alliance that they seek to join, and the European nations to which many Ukrainians feel much closer than to President Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

“I do think that for us as Ukrainians, it feels a little bit like another country is using our vulnerability, which was not created by us,” said Ukrainian legislator Inna Sovsun.

She said it was “critically important when we are designing the future to keep in mind that people will live here in the future”.

(By Vladyslav Smilianets, Thomas Peter, Anastasiia Malenko and Christian Lowe; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

The vast Central African nation is home to large reserves of copper, cobalt, lithium and uranium among other minerals, but chronic instability has long been an obstacle to the foreign investment needed to fully develop them.

Kinshasa is currently on a push to attract new players to the sector and talks are already under way with Washington after a Congolese senator pitching a minerals-for-security deal contacted US officials.

Asked by Reuters on Monday about possible interest in Congolese minerals, Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Prevot said Belgium had firms with the know-how to ramp up its role in the sector.

“We have globally recognized expertise with players like Umicore and John Cockerill, who have the capacity to process all these rare critical materials,” he said.

“If one day the opportunity arises to also be an investment partner, we will not pull back,” he added.

Despite China’s dominance, Belgian firms have been involved in mining, processing and trading Congolese cobalt, copper and diamonds for decades.

Belgium-based global materials technology group Umicore signed a deal with state miner Gecamines last year to ship germanium concentrates to Europe.

Prevot said Belgium’s approach to working with Congo was good for both countries, contrasting it with how some other partners operated.

“We observe the motivations of other international actors that can sometimes have a more transactional approach,” he said.

Prevot was due to visit the city of Beni on Tuesday as part of a trip intended to draw attention to serious human rights issues, particularly in Congo’s eastern provinces where the army is facing an offensive by Rwandan-backed M23 rebels.

(By Ange Kasongo, Maxwell Akalaare Adombila and Sofia Christensen; Editing by Robbie Corey-Boulet and Joe Bavier)

The company’s US subsidiary, TMC USA, filed the applications under the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act (DSHMRA) and regulations set by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which collectively form the US seabed mining code. 

The move comes just days after President Donald Trump issued an executive order to fast-track offshore mining, aiming to boost access to critical minerals despite strong opposition from environmental groups.

TMC’s two exploration licence applications cover a combined 199,895 square kilometres, while the commercial recovery permit covers 25,160 square kilometres within the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, a resource-rich swath of the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and Mexico. These areas include the company’s indicated and measured polymetallic nodule resources.

The zones hold 1.63 billion wet metric tonnes of SEC SK 1300-compliant nodules, with an estimated exploration upside of 500 million tonnes, according to the company.

The resource is projected to contain 15.5 million tonnes of nickel, 12.8 million tonnes of copper, 2 million tonnes of cobalt, and 345 million tonnes of manganese — metals critical for batteries, clean energy, infrastructure and defence applications.

“This marks a major step forward — not just for TMC USA, but for America’s mineral independence and industrial resurgence,” CEO Gerard Barron said in a statement. “We’re offering the US a shovel-ready path to new and abundant supplies of critical metals.”

The Trump administration views deep-sea mining as a strategic route to reduce dependence on foreign mineral supply chains. A White House official suggested the industry could generate up to 100,000 jobs and add hundreds of billions to the economy over the next decade.

Hurdles remain

The company’s ambitions are not without controversy. Environmentalists have long warned that the impacts of deep-sea mining are poorly understood. Critics argue more scientific research is needed before any commercial extraction begins, citing risks to fragile ecosystems and ocean biodiversity.

Supporters counter that deep-sea mining is essential to meet rising global demand for minerals. The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts the need for copper and rare earth elements will grow by 40% in the coming years, driven by clean technology and electrification.

TMC has pledged to mitigate environmental damage by leaving at least 30% of its contract areas untouched. The company also claims its modern nodule collector disturbs only the top three centimetres of seabed sediment, far less than earlier technologies.

Still, TMC’s application could reignite tensions at the international level. The company has been operating in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone for years under exploration contracts backed by the UN-affiliated International Seabed Authority (ISA), which governs mining in international waters. But the US is not a signatory to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and TMC’s move to seek approval under US law may be seen as sidestepping international consensus.

Critics warn such actions could undermine more than a decade of negotiations aimed at finalizing global regulations for seabed mining, potentially setting a precedent for other countries or companies to bypass multilateral frameworks.

European Metals Holdings (EMH), the project’s majority shareholder, announced that the funding will come from the EU’s Just Transition Fund and will be overseen by the Czech Ministry of Environment.

The funds are contingent on the project’s environmental impact assessment (EIA), which must be submitted and approved by the Czech environment ministry by year-end.

EMH said the grant will help accelerate development and potentially increase the project’s annual lithium production by unlocking economies of scale. Executive chairman Keith Coughlan said the financing would allow the company to “fast-track a number of critical path items” as the project moves toward construction.

Cinovec, located in the Krusné Hory Mountains near the German border, is the largest hard rock lithium resource in the European Union. It was declared a Strategic Project under the EU Critical Raw Materials Act in March and also recognized as a Strategic Deposit by the Czech government. These designations are expected to streamline permitting and secure support from EU institutions.

EMH has appointed engineering firm DRA Global Limited to complete a definitive feasibility study by the end of 2025. If environmental approval is granted, construction permits could follow within 24 months.

Separetely, EMH posted its March quarter report, showing a cash balance of A$4.3 million and no debt as of the end of the first quarter. 

Cinovec remains central to Europe’s strategy to secure domestic sources of critical raw materials, particularly lithium, which is vital for electric vehicle batteries and renewable energy storage.

On April 8, the Department of the Interior (DOI) issued approval for Dateline Resources (ASX: DTR) to continue its development of the Colosseum rare earths project situated within the Mojave National Preserve in San Bernardino County. Due to its location, the project has been stalled for years.

According to the Australian miner, the Department’s communication reaffirms that the company’s existing rights under the Mining Act and the California Desert Protection Act are now valid.

The DOI approval paves the way to the development of America’s second rare earths mine. Currently, the US has only one producing rare earths mine, the Mountain Pass held by MP Materials (NYSE: MP), located just 10 km to the south.

“The Department of the Interior’s public support and confirmation of our rights provide a strong foundation for moving the Colosseum project forward,” stated Dateline’s managing director Stephen Baghdadi in a press release.

The Colosseum project has a rich history of mining dating to the California Gold Rush, but it wasn’t until 1986 that industrial-scale gold mining took place on the property. Between 1989 and 1993, the mine, under ownership of Canada’s LAC Minerals, churned out 344,000 oz. from two open pits. Barrick Gold then held the project for two decades but conducted minimal activity.

Similarity to Mountain Pass

Dateline took over the project in 2021 and has since reviewed work undertaken by the USGS to identify radio metric signatures for the Colosseum – Mountain Pass corridor.

Upon completion of review, Dateline’s team concluded that the project shares the same geological setting as Mountain Pass, which started production in 1952 and was a primary global source of rare earth elements (REE) from the 1960s to the 1990s.

Technical assessments suggest the potential for REE-bearing ore within Colosseum’s claim boundary, Dateline said.

The project currently has no estimated resources for REE, only a JORC-2012-compliant gold resource of 1.1 million oz., with about two-thirds in the measured and indicated categories. A scoping study in August 2024 outlined an eight-plus-year mine life averaging 75,000 oz. of gold production per annum.

The ceremony was attended by key government authorities from the State of Goiás and the Municipality of Nova Roma, as well as representatives from federal agencies and international embassies.

The government officials expressed support for the project’s streamlined development, recognizing its strategic potential to position Goiás as a global center for sustainable production of heavy rare earths, particularly dysprosium and terbium, Aclara said in a press release.

“Our heavy rare earth production, dysprosium and terbium, will be essential for establishing a reliable and alternative supply chain for the permanent magnets used in electric vehicles, wind turbines, robotics and other advanced technologies,” CEO Ramón Barúa said.

Barúa also said the Carina project’s future production of these key elements “will enable the fabrication of approximately five million electric vehicles per year”, which he said would position Goiás at the forefront in the global energy transition.

At the Aparecida de Goiânia pilot plant, the company expects to process approximately 200 tonnes of clay material from the Carina project, resulting in an estimated production of 150 kg of heavy rare earth carbonates.

According to the company, the process flowsheet incorporated several optimizations that focused on increasing efficiency, reducing costs and improving the purity of the final product. This optimized approach builds on its previous piloting efforts in Chile, where it processed 25 tonnes of clay from the Carina project.

Aclara Resources’ stock traded flat on Monday morning at C$0.75 apiece, for a market capitalization of $163.3 million.

“With an estimated investment of R$2.8 billion ($500 million), the project will create thousands of jobs and position our state as a leader in the production of rare earths – strategic minerals for the future of clean technologies such as electric vehicles and wind energy,” Daniel Vilela, Vice Governor of the State of Goiás, said.

Production in 2028

The facility represents a key step in advancing the Carina project towards production in 2028. The project is currently in its permitting stage, with Aclara aiming to submit its environmental impact assessment mid-2025. Later in the year, the company plans to complete a pre-feasibility study, followed by feasibility study in 2026.

To fund these works, Aclara raised $25 million via a private placement last year.

The Carina project currently has an estimated resource of about 298 million tonnes grading 1,452 parts per million TREO (total rare earth oxides), all in the inferred category. This would support annual production of 191 tonnes of dysprosium and terbium, representing about 13% of China’s official production in 2023, Aclara estimates.

The company is also looking to build a rare earths separation plant in the United States. This facility will process mixed rare earth carbonates sourced from its mineral resource projects, separating them into pure individual rare earth oxides.

Additionally, through a joint venture with Chile’s CAP, Alcara is advancing its alloy-making capabilities to convert these refined oxides into the alloys needed for fabricating permanent magnets.

While pre-construction activities are underway, additional expenses are needed to mitigate wastewater challenges, Lynas said in a statement Monday. The company — backed by Australia’s richest person Gina Rinehart — is in discussions with the US government about the issue, it added.

Perth-based Lynas is the largest supplier outside China of rare earths, used in everything from smartphones to defense applications. The Asian nation’s dominance of the industry has caused angst in the US, which is seeking to bolster alternative supply chains. In response to punitive tariffs imposed by Washington, Beijing has added seven rare earths to its export control list.

“We are also reviewing the potential cost implications for the US project as a consequence of recent announcements on global tariffs,” Lynas said.

Lynas produces so-called ‘light’ rare earths, which are used in magnets for electric vehicle motors, wind turbines and munitions. It’s set to enter the ‘heavy’ industry with new refining capacity both in the US and in Malaysia, where it has an existing site that from later this year will start processing many of the metals restricted by Chinese export controls.

Lynas currently sources ore for its refineries from its Mt Weld mine near Kalgoorlie in Western Australia, according to its website. It will send ore from there to the Texas facility once it is operational.

(By Paul-Alain Hunt)

Benjamin Katabuka, the country’s newly appointed director general, told the British newspaper that KoBold is looking to “go big” in the DRC, currently the world’s biggest producer of cobalt and the leading copper producer on the continent.

He added the company plans to apply for licences to explore for these two critical minerals as well as lithium, of which the DRC holds significant deposits but has yet to fully unlock.

These investments could potentially be “in the billions”, Katabuka said, as cited by the Financial Times on Saturday.

The report comes amid heightened trade tensions between the US and China, which saw the latter flex its dominant position in the critical minerals supply chain by placing export restrictions on rare earths.

In the Congo, many of its biggest mines are run by Chinese groups, while American companies have had little presence since Freeport-McMoRan sold its stake in the Tenke Fungurume copper mine to China’s CMOC in 2016.

Katabuka said the Congolese government is “interested in having some Western investors coming into the country” to balance China’s presence in the nation.

Congo minerals

KoBold’s push into Congo comes at a time when the African nation is negotiating with the US on a potential minerals pact. Earlier this year, DRC President Felix Tshisekedi offered a minerals-for-security deal to Washington in an effort to end the ongoing armed conflict with Rwanda-backed M23 rebels.

On the jurisdictional risk, DRC’s Katabuka acknowledged that it has been “difficult” to do business in the country, but added that KoBold has assured that the company will demand “high standards” for its operations.

KoBold — which specializes in using artificial intelligence to identify untapped critical minerals deposits — has around 60 active projects across four continents. In Africa, its focal point has been Zambia, where last year it made what was the country’s largest copper discovery in a century.

A move into Congo means the company would have a presence in Africa’s two largest copper producers. Earlier this year, it also expanded into Namibia, focusing on its deposits of lithium and nickel.

To support its critical minerals exploration, KoBold raised $537 million during its latest round from investors including Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Earthshot Ventures, Equinor, July Fund, Mitsubishi Corporation and Standard Investments.

To date, the California-based company has raised $1 billion.

In an earnings call this week, Musk confirmed that production of its Optimus robots is being impacted by the “magnet issue” — referring to the key robotics component that now requires Beijing approval to be shipped into the US.

Earlier this month, China announced export restrictions on seven rare earth minerals in response to the punitive tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump. The export curbs also extend to rare earth magnets and other finished products, which have vital uses across various high-tech industries, and in some cases, are indispensable to military applications.

“China wants some assurances that these are not used for military purposes, which obviously they’re not. They’re just going into a humanoid robot,” said Musk in his Tuesday call.

In light of these measures, companies like Tesla are now required to apply to the Ministry of Commerce to obtain their export licences — a process that can range from six or seven weeks to even several months. Such a process, says Musk, would undoubtedly hamper the Optimus rollout plans.

Still, the Tesla boss — who pledged to take a step back from politics and refocus on his business ventures — told investors he remains optimistic of realizing the initial goal of churning out thousands of Optimus robots by year-end, then scaling up its production to 1 million units by 2030.

Musk also acknowledged that the robots’ production timeline is heavily dependent on the availability of critical components, stating that “Optimus production will move as fast as the slowest and least lucky component”.

Tesla’s first prototype of Optimus was launched in 2022. At that time, Musk said these general-purpose humanoid robots, which are designed to perform tasks that are dangerous, repetitive or boring for humans using advanced AI technologies, “has the potential to be more significant than its vehicle business over time.”

In addition to the Optimus project, Tesla’s core electric vehicle business is also expected to feel the impacts of China’s rare earth export restrictions.

A senior automotive executive told the Financial Times that the critical mineral restrictions would be “consequential” for Tesla, describing them as a “7 or 8” on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of severity.

China currently produces around 90% of the world’s rare earth minerals, making it a key supplier to the US, which only has one producing rare earths mine – Mountain Pass in California.

Even as countries like the US start to explore options and ramp up production, China is still expected to dominate the global supply with a 54% market share by 2030, according to IEA projections.

​

Joint projects in the Arctic, as well as oil and gas and rare-earth minerals, are among the options being considered under a partnership the US would offer as part of a peace pact, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing matters that aren’t public.

Russia, encouraged by President Donald Trump’s talk of economic deals that could follow a peace agreement, is drawing up a list of projects and assets that officials hope might interest the US, according to people in Moscow involved in the effort. The ideas are collected by Kirill Dmitriev, President Vladimir Putin’s envoy for economic relations, who’s become a key conduit to the White House.

The two sides aren’t discussing plans directly at the moment, the people said. Any effort to rekindle economic ties would face enormous hurdles, from the thousands of sanctions still in place on Russia from the US and its Group of Seven allies to the Kremlin’s longstanding reluctance to allow foreign investors control in strategic sectors like energy.

The focus on possible business deals, especially in the energy sector, highlights the Trump administration’s transactional approach to foreign policy. If the agreements are realized, they could also leave US companies with a major role in the flow of gas, oil and electricity from Russia and Ukraine, including to Europe.

The effort follows on the heels of Trump’s push for a comprehensive investment agreement with Ukraine that would give the US a major role in projects to exploit the country’s mineral deposits and rebuild its infrastructure.

The US is driving for a quicker peace accord and has threatened to walk away from negotiations if the parties won’t agree to halt the hostilities. The US will demand that Russia accept Ukraine’s right to develop its own adequately equipped army and defense industry as part of a peace agreement, people said earlier this week, while Ukraine may be expected to give up some territory.

US envoy Steve Witkoff met with Putin in Moscow Friday for talks that the Kremlin described as constructive. Dmitriev participated in the meeting, according to state media.

“The way that Trump likes to frame politics is in reference points that he can understand like business, and for now the Russians are happy to go along with this,” said Emily Ferris, a senior research fellow in the International Security Studies department at the Royal United Services Institute in London.

The US proposed lifting sanctions on Moscow as part of any peace deal, according to people familiar with the situation, though that would also require agreement with the European Union as many of the most stringent restrictions have been imposed by the bloc.

The US sees economic incentives as a key element in persuading Putin in the drive for peace, according to the people.

“We do not confirm or deny details of ongoing negotiations. When the President has something to announce, we will announce it,” White House spokesman James Hewitt said in response to a request for comment for this article.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio denied a report he and Witkoff had discussed lifting energy sanctions.

Trump posted on social media Apr. 20 that if Russia and Ukraine reach a deal, “BOTH WILL THEN START TO DO BIG BUSINESS WITH THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.”

Some Russian officials are hopeful they can establish an economic partnership with the US even if talks over ending the fighting in Ukraine collapse, one of the people close to the Kremlin said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov didn’t respond to a request for comment. Dmitriev’s office declined for comment.

“Russia’s trade with China is currently about 70-fold larger than its trade with the US, so that naturally limits the available options,” said Maria Snegovaya, senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. Still, the White House could adopt a more flexible approach to sanctions enforcement, potentially allowing US energy companies to secure meaningful stakes in Russian energy ventures, including in the Arctic, she said.

One US proposal would see American control of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which is now under Russian occupation, with the electricity output sent to both countries, the people said. Ukraine indicated that such an option at Europe’s biggest nuclear plant would come with numerous issues.

“If the US enters a format of managing this station, they will only be able to do so with the help of our technical personnel. Immediately, questions arise about access to water, infrastructure and security,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said earlier this week. It would be more acceptable if Ukraine and the US controlled the plant, though that option isn’t on the table, according to him.

The US has also discussed ways that the participation of American investors, either in production or transportation assets, might help restore some of Russia’s energy exports to Europe. The continent was Moscow’s largest market before the Kremlin’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine but has since slashed its dependence on Russian supplies.

The US has indicated an interest in working with Russia on projects in the Arctic and cooperating with energy giant Gazprom PJSC, although those contacts were not on an official level, Bloomberg reported in March. It has also informally explored the possibility of working with Russia to resume natural gas deliveries to Europe that were halted by Ukraine this year, two people said. That’s especially complicated as many states diversified supplies away from Russia following the invasion of Ukraine and the EU is working on a roadmap to phase out Russian fossil fuels.

The idea of allowing US companies to get access to Russian energy or transport assets has been discussed internally in Moscow, said a top executive of one state entity working with Gazprom and Rosneft PJSC. Selling stakes in energy projects or companies to the Americans, ideally those close to Trump, could be strategically useful, as it may ease the sales and cross border payment processes, he said, adding that he’s expressing a personal view.

It’s unclear which American companies could be involved in investments in the Russian energy sector and past relationships have been bumpy. The US itself is also competing with Russia for the European LNG market.

The US wasn’t among Russia’s top 10 biggest foreign direct investors before the war in Ukraine. American business in Russia was driven by brands ranging from McDonald’s Corp and PepsiCo Inc to the Ford Motor Co, while its presence in the energy and commodities sectors was less visible.

There were also big losses after the invasion of Ukraine. Exxon Mobil Corp eventually lost the Sakhalin-1 oil and gas project as Putin signed a decree to transfer operations to a Russian entity.

Putin has also offered Russia’s rare earth deposits, following Trump’s repeated public expressions of interest in the critical minerals.

The Tomtor deposit in Yakutia in Russia’s far east is one potential candidate for cooperation with the US, one of the people close to the Russian government said. The deposit, one of the word’s biggest, in particular in niobium, is owned by former managers of the ICT Group since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and development was paused as sanctions prevented access to needed technologies.

American involvement in the project may help to resolve the issue as some sanctions could be eased, according to a person familiar with the situation. The deposit’s current owners weren’t available to comment.

Putin in November ordered to ensure the development of Tomtor either by its owners or with help from other investors or the state.

To be sure, even if a peace accord is reached to end the war in Ukraine, there’ll be a lot of political and economic uncertainty over the outlook for long-term investments in Russia.

“Many American companies lost a lot in Russia since 2014,” said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “Any significant influx of investors from the US is a utopia.”

CHARTS: Rare earth export restrictions, price spikes and the risks of demand destruction

“Ukraine, headed by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has not signed the final papers on the very important rare earths deal with the United States. It is at least three weeks late. Hopefully, it will be signed IMMEDIATELY. Work on the overall peace deal between Russia and Ukraine is going smoothly,” he said in a Truth Social post.

(By Katharine Jackson; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

Read More: US eyes post-war joint business with Russia in energy, metals

From January 2009 through August 2011, the monthly average price of dysprosium (Dy) oxide (China FOB) increased 26-fold, from $91/kg to $2,377/kg.

This price spike is often attributed to China halting rare earth exports to Japan amidst a territorial dispute, but in reality the rally had started months prior and was accelerated by a multitude of different forces; namely, falling Chinese export quotas, rising Chinese export duties, China’s weaponization of rare earth exports, a clampdown on illegal production in the nation, and resultant speculation and panic buying by end users.

This year, with China imposing export restrictions on a suite of rare earth materials earlier this month, including Dy oxide and other Dy-containing products, such as NdFeB magnets, flows from China to global end users are currently being bogged down by bureaucracy as sellers in China apply for and await the receipt of export licenses for affected orders – a process expected to take upwards of 45 business days.

Over the long term, these restrictions will have lasting impacts on global rare earths trade through the galvanization of supply chain development efforts in the US, Europe and elsewhere. In the near term, however, global end users – mindful of the 2010/11 price spike – face major uncertainty with respect to supplies and prices.

For the most part, rare earth prices have responded negatively to the new export restrictions, despite a sustained reduction in supplies from Myanmar and the recent stoppage of concentrate exports to China by MP Materials. Interestingly, prices were also initially indifferent when China halted exports to Japan in September 2010, but three months later embarked on a historic upswing that remains unmatched to this day.

Below is a summary of key developments from January 2009 through August 2011 that led to Dy oxide’s meteoric price rise.

January 2009: $91/kg

As of January 2009, China’s rare earth export quotas (i.e., the amount it permitted for export) had fallen steadily since 2005, down 13% in four years, raising concerns among end users.

Over the same period, China re-introduced export duties on rare earths in 2006 and gradually ratcheted them up from 10% to as high as 25% for a strategic selection of products, including neodymium metal, as well as dysprosium and terbium carbonate and chloride.

August 2009: $114/kg

With export quotas down and duties up, China’s MIIT released a draft report in August 2009 that hinted Beijing would ban the export of five rare earth elements within the next five years.

The following month, the New York Times reported that China was planning to further reduce its export quotas in 2010.

The price of dysprosium jumped 26% versus January but went largely unchanged thereafter through the end of 2009.

January 2010: $129/kg

In January 2010, China raised export duties on Fe-Dy alloy, a key input for high performance NdFeB magnets, from 10% to 20%, lifting the price of Dy products, including Dy oxide, by a similar rate month over month.

At the same time, China slashed its first of two export quotas for the year, as foreshadowed by the New York Times, leading the price of Dy oxide to more than double by July as end users raced to secure material.

In July 2010, China announced a 72% reduction to its second export quota for the year, exacerbating concerns while propelling the price of Dy oxide 26% higher month-over-month.

Two months later, in September 2010, China temporarily banned rare earth exports to Japan amid a territorial dispute.

Nevertheless, the price of Dy oxide and many other rare earths increased just modestly between July and December 2010, but the fever was nearing a boil.

In December 2010, Reuters reported that China planned to reduce its export quota for the first half of 2011 by another 35%, fueling a January price jump and a historic upswing to follow.

January 2011: $343/kg

Following the Reuters report, the five-month-stagnant price jumped 18% in January, 19% in February, 28% in March, 31% in April and 17% in May to a record $799/kg – a historic rally that remains unmatched to this day.

August 2011: $2,377/kg

A month later, in June 2011, the price soared 80% to $1,440/kg as the Chinese government cracked down on illegal mining in the nation and by August 2011 prices topped $2,377/kg, a 26-fold increase in just 31 months.

For the next five months, the price began to deflate but held above $2,000/kg into January 2012.

In February 2012, the average price fell to $1,633/kg and by December 2012 was down to $748/kg.

The following three years (2013/14/15) saw the price drop by roughly 33% each year to a floor of around $180/kg in 2016.

Short lived spike, long lasting fallout

While the price spike was short lived, the fallout was profound and enduring. In the years that followed, a quiet revolution unfolded in the electric vehicle sector. Where REE-powered motors once reigned uncontested, their dominance eroded as some manufacturers adopted or pivoted to alternatives.

From a negligible share of less than 1% in 2010, EVs powered by REE-free motors surged to over 12% of global sales by late 2017.

Adamas Intelligence points to this as a textbook case of engineered demand destruction – a deliberate shift to alternatives born of caution, catalyzed by the trauma of the 2010/11 price surge.

Companies, burned by volatility and unwilling to remain at the mercy of China’s whims, sought refuge in innovation, re-engineering their futures to sidestep the rare earth chokehold.

By 2018, however, with prices low and volatility tempered, REE-powered motors quickly recaptured market share, with 97% of all EVs sold each year since 2017 using them.

In 2017, when REE-free motor adoption peaked, the EV industry was still a relatively small end-use category and thus the impact on overall demand was less substantial than it would be today.

Undoubtedly, China recognizes this and will play its hand carefully this time around.

April 2025: China announces new export controls

Fast forward to this month and China is at it again, unveiling export controls on select rare earth products. But this time, the playbook feels different – less blunt force, more scalpel.

Adamas sees a calculated precision in Beijing’s approach, an intent to wield its resource dominance with surgical intent.

The likely targets? Initially, industries like defense contractors and drone makers, sectors where REE scarcity could deliver maximum disruption to rivals, particularly in the West.

Meanwhile, China appears poised to spare others, like the EV industry, from the worst of the fallout – perhaps a nod to its own stake in the green revolution or a bid to keep global markets from spiraling into further chaos.

Unlike the reckless two-order-of-magnitude price surge of the early 2010s, this move suggests a China keen to inflict pain where it hurts most while dodging the collateral damage of a full-blown crisis.

The message is clear: China knows the power it holds and is learning to wield it with chilling finesse.

For the rest of the world, the echoes of 2010/11 still linger – a haunting reminder of vulnerability, a call to diversify, innovate, or risk being caught in the crosshairs of a prolonged resource war where the stakes only grow higher.

Speaking at the Future of Energy Security summit held in London this week, IEA executive director Fatih Birol highlighted the strong expansion of clean energy technologies in recent years — while remarkable — also creates a new problem: the urgent need for raw materials.

“To manufacture this new clean energy technologies, you need critical minerals,” Birol said during the two-day event co-hosted by the British government. “We look at where the critical minerals are produced, where they are refined and where they are manufactured, that is a huge concentration, and this is something that we think is risky.”

According to the IEA, the world’s supply of critical minerals — such as copper, cobalt, lithium and rare earth elements — are currently dominated by China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Australia, Chile, Indonesia and, to a lesser extent, the US.

This concentration of raw materials, said Birol, represents a “new emerging energy security challenge”, and the reason why the Agency launched its critical minerals program.

“Currently, we are A) not able to keep up with the demand, and B) the ability of manufacturing these critical minerals is concentrated in one single country or two,” Birol said in a speech last year when announcing the program.

In response to this challenge, the IEA urged nations to focus on policies that promote the diversification of mineral sources and move away from “critical mineral monopolies.”

“Most of these critical minerals are currently controlled by just one or two countries and it is important to ensure diversity in clean energy,” Birol told reporters from Turkish state-owned news agency Anadolu on Friday.

“This is not about whether a country is good or bad. If there is a technical problem or a geopolitical development in that country, entire energy supply chains could be jeopardized,” he said.

On the sidelines of the summit, Birol noted China’s dominance in the critical minerals sector and its contribution to low-cost clean energy technologies. The Asian nation is the main producer for 30 out of 50 minerals deemed critical by the US, and is the world’s top miner and processor of rare earths.

The Hermosa project is currently the only advanced US mining project capable of producing two federally designated critical minerals: zinc and manganese, and received board approval for $2.16 billion in funding to develop the zinc-lead-silver deposit in February.

This represents the largest private investment in southern Arizona’s history, and the largest investment in the local Santa Cruz county economy to date by nearly nine times, the Australian miner said.

Last year, the Hermosa project became the first to be added to the United States’ FAST-41 permitting process. The company said it has the potential to become one of the world’s largest zinc producers.

Centro will use advanced automation to enhance safety and productivity — key pillars of sustainable operations, the company said, adding that the groundbreaking is the result of nearly three years of design and planning to align with its long-term economic and employment goals in Santa Cruz county.

Supporting an ‘All in Community’ workforce development ecosystem, the groundbreaking also marks the launch of the South32 Hermosa Workforce Development Executive Committee – an expanded initiative aimed at supporting long-term workforce development across Santa Cruz.

The committee brings together local education leaders and South32 representatives to focus on post secondary education, facilities development, resources and training needs of the local businesses, the company said.

“Centro represents more than just a facility – it is a commitment to create economic opportunity and shared value in Santa Cruz county,” South32 Hermosa president Pat Risner said in a news release.

“By establishing Centro in Nogales, we are ensuring that the economic benefits of Hermosa stay local, providing high-skilled, good-paying jobs and supporting the development of a skilled workforce for generations, while also providing opportunities for both populations historically excluded from the industry and underrepresented community groups.”

Attendees at the ceremony included Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs, local and state officials, municipal leaders, and representatives from organizations such as the Port Authority, The Nature Conservancy and the University of Arizona.

“Centro, as the project’s state-of-the-art operations center, will create good-paying jobs and strengthen our economy,” said Congressman Juan Ciscomani.

“South32 Hermosa’s Centro is a major step forward for regional development and the production of critical minerals in southern Arizona,” Ciscomani added. “By anchoring high quality jobs, workforce training, and critical infrastructure in our communities, this project strengthens the local economy and positions our region to continue to serve as a hub for responsible innovation and growth.”

The order, which Trump signed in private, seeks to jumpstart the mining of both US and international waters as part of a push to offset China’s sweeping control of the critical minerals industry.

Reuters first reported last month that the order was under deliberation.

Parts of the Pacific Ocean and elsewhere are estimated to contain large amounts of potato-shaped rocks known as polymetallic nodules filled with the building blocks for electric vehicles and electronics.

More than 1 billion metric tons of those nodules are estimated to be in US waters and filled with manganese, nickel, copper and other critical minerals, according to an administration official.

Extracting them could boost US GDP by $300 billion over 10 years and create 100,000 jobs, the official added.

“The United States has a core national security and economic interest in maintaining leadership in deep-sea science and technology and seabed mineral resources,” Trump said in the order.

The order directs the administration to expedite mining permits under the Deep Seabed Hard Minerals Resource Act of 1980 and to establish a process for issuing permits along the US Outer Continental Shelf.

It also orders the expedited review of seabed mining permits “in areas beyond the national jurisdiction,” a move likely to spark friction with the international community.

The International Seabed Authority – created by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which the US has not ratified – has for years been considering standards for deep-sea mining in international waters, although it has yet to formalize them due to unresolved differences over acceptable levels of dust, noise and other factors from the practice.

Supporters of deep-sea mining say it would lessen the need for large mining operations on land, which are often unpopular with host communities. Environmental groups are calling for all activities to be banned, warning that industrial operations on the ocean floor could cause irreversible biodiversity loss.

“The deep ocean belongs to everyone and protecting it is humanity’s global duty. The sea floor environment is not a platform for ‘America First’ extraction,” said Emily Jeffers of the Center for Biological Diversity, a conservation group that opposes the practice.

Any country can allow deep-sea mining in its own territorial waters, roughly up to 200 nautical miles from shore, and companies are already lining up to mine US waters.

Impossible Metals earlier this month asked the administration to launch a commercial auction for access to deposits of nickel, cobalt and other critical minerals off the coast of American Samoa.

Shares of The Metals Company – among the most prominent of deep-sea mining companies – rose on Thursday by roughly 40% to hit a 52-week high of $3.39 per share after the Reuters report earlier in the day on the executive order.

“With a stable, transparent, and enforceable regulatory pathway available under existing US law, we look forward to delivering the world’s first commercial nodule project, responsibly and economically,” said Gerard Barron, CEO of the company, which aims to extract nodules from a vast plain of the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and Mexico known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone.

Beyond The Metals Company, others eyeing deep-sea mining include California-based Impossible Metals, Russia’s JSC Yuzhmorgeologiya, Blue Minerals Jamaica, China Minmetals, and Kiribati’s Marawa Research and Exploration.

Other mining steps

US access to critical minerals – especially those produced by Chinese companies – has dwindled in recent months as Beijing has limited exports of several types. That, in turn, has ratcheted up pressure on Washington to support efforts to boost domestic mining.

Last week, Trump officials fast-tracked permitting on 10 mining projects across the United States and implemented an abbreviated approval process for mining projects on federal lands.

The administration also said it would approve one of the country’s largest copper mines.

Trump’s Thursday order uses the term “rare earths” to broadly refer to all critical minerals and is not meant to imply the administration believes the nodules contain neodymium and the 16 other rare earths, the administration official said.

(By Jarrett Renshaw and Ernest Scheyder; Editing by Aidan Lewis and Daniel Wallis)

A surge in supply from the Congo, responsible for 80% of the world’s cobalt output, coupled with tepid demand from the electric vehicle market, saw cobalt sulphate entering the EV battery supply chain in China fall to an average of just $3,556 per tonne in January.  That compares to a peak of nearly $19,000 a tonne in 2022.

Copper production in the DRC, with a big chunk owned by Chinese companies, was rising fast – leading to a near 40% jump in the country’s co-product cobalt output in 2024, but in February the country announced a four month ban on exports to ease the glut. 

Cobalt sulphate prices duly responded, jumping more than 60% in March to average $5,767 a tonne, and holding onto most of those gains in April.   

Cobalt byproduct output is also increasing in Indonesia as its nickel shipments ballooned and the DRC is now in talks with the Asian nation to collaborate on managing supply of cobalt including the use of quotas. 

Cobalt consumption in EV batteries overtook other sources of demand like aerospace several years ago and the impact of the DRC strategy has been swift.  

The latest data from Adamas Intelligence tracking EV battery metal deployment in over 120 countries paired with monthly prices shows the cobalt market springing back into life. 

The estimated size of the battery cobalt market shot up in March to an overall $152.4 million, up 120% over February and the highest since December 2022, lifting the value of sales weighted average cobalt contained in tandem. 

While March was a good month across the board for the EV industry and by extension battery metal deployment, and January and February are generally quiet months for passenger vehicle sales, cobalt vastly outperformed other battery metals. 

Nickel rose by a more subdued 41%, also amid rising prices, while the value of battery lithium deployment increased by 28% month over month, relying on rising EV sales in Asia more than prices, which are still bobbing along near the bottom of the cycle.  

And while price can make all the difference for suppliers to the EV battery market, longer term trends for cobalt (and its ternary cathode cousins) in the EV market are less encouraging. 

Lithium iron phosphate or LFP batteries continue to rapidly take market share from NCM (nickel-cobalt-manganese) and NCA (nickel-cobalt-aluminum) cathode chemistries. 

The China-fueled rise of LFP has fostered a large divergence in global consumption growth rates of key battery metals, according to Adamas Intelligence data.

For example, in calendar 2024 iron and phosphorous deployment were up by 54% and 49%, respectively, for a combined 399.1 kilotonnes contained in the batteries of sold EVs over the course of the year.

In contrast, global nickel deployment into EV batteries increased 11% to 322.7 kt while that of manganese rose 10% to 73.6 kt and cobalt 7% to 59.6 kt as the industry continues to thrift the metal.  Keeping in mind that the installed tonnage does not take into account any losses during processing, chemical conversion or battery production scrap (often well into double digit percentages) so required tonnes are meaningfully higher at the mine mouth. 

In total, installed tonnage of nickel, cobalt and manganese last year represented 21% of the battery metal basket.  

That’s down from a 24% share in 2023 and 36% in 2020 when top EV maker BYD shifted to an all-LFP line-up, and LFP-powered Tesla Model 3s re-ignited uptake of the Ni-Co-Mn-free battery chemistry. 

The world’s largest EV battery maker CATL, responsible for 30% of total battery capacity deployed globally in GWh terms, in April announced that commercial production of sodium-ion packs will begin before the end of 2025. Due to its inherent limitations, sodium-ion is more likely to eat into LFP’s market than NCM’s.

At least there’s that.    

For a fuller analysis of the EV battery metals market check out the May issue of The Northern Miner print and digital editions.

* Frik Els is Editor at Large for MINING.COM and Head of Adamas Inside, providing news and analysis based on Adamas Intelligence data.

Responding to a Reuters question on whether Kigali and Washington were discussing a mineral access deal, a Rwanda government spokesperson said: “Yes, this is part of the discussions that we are having with the US.”

She declined to provide any further details.

The US is currently engaged in ongoing talks with Congo over a potential minerals-for-security deal.

Congo accuses Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s government of supporting the Tutsi-led M23 rebels who have seized a large swath of eastern Congo, a mineral-rich region that is plagued by violence.

(By Philbert Girinema and Elias Biryabarema; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Under the new directive, environmental reviews that normally take up to a year will now be done in just 14 days. More detailed reviews, which usually take two years, will be completed in 28 days.

“The United States cannot afford to wait,” said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. “We are taking decisive action to remove bottlenecks and ensure that America’s energy future is secure.”

The accelerated process will apply to projects involving crude oil, natural gas, coal, uranium, biofuels, lease condensates, geothermal energy, kinetic hydropower, and refined petroleum products. It also includes initiatives focused on critical minerals.

To enable the streamlined timelines, the Department will implement an alternative compliance process under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), allowing for more concise documentation and faster review. Additionally, the Endangered Species Act’s Section 7 consultation process will be expedited through emergency consultation procedures coordinated with the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Sovereign wealth fund for US miners

The Trump administration is also considering a sovereign wealth fund to invest in domestic mining and processing of critical minerals.

Speaking at a conference organized by the Hamm Institute for American Energy this week, Burgum said the administration is evaluating a range of financial tools to boost domestic production of rare earths and other strategic resources.

“We are exploring all options to ensure a reliable, American-controlled supply of critical minerals,” he said. “Reducing reliance on foreign imports is a matter of national security.”

The proposed policy changes mark a significant shift in how the federal government manages its natural resources, and could have far-reaching impacts on the US mining and energy sectors.