During a Senate Energy Committee hearing held before the Congressional recess, Sen. Angus King (I-VT) questioned experts about EPA project timelines.
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NewsTranscript
00:00We'll turn next to Senator King.
00:02Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
00:03This discussion reminds me of a little-known biblical provision
00:06where God came to Moses and said,
00:09I have good news and bad news.
00:11Moses said, what's the good news?
00:12God said, I'm going to allow you to part
00:14the waters of the Red Sea.
00:15My people will escape.
00:17The waters will then come back and engulf Pharaoh's army.
00:20Moses said, God, that's wonderful.
00:22What's the bad news?
00:23You prepare the environmental impact statement.
00:26What's the bad news?
00:28Sorry.
00:30I couldn't resist.
00:35Mr. Haddock, why does the permitting take so long?
00:37I used to work on permitting of energy projects.
00:39We thought four or five years was a long time.
00:42Why does it take 29 years?
00:43What are the bottlenecks?
00:47The permitting itself doesn't take 29 years,
00:50but the average EIS is about four years
00:53for a mining project now.
00:56There is a massive amount of baseline data and work
00:59that has to go in back in an iterative process
01:03with the agency.
01:06And there are just detailed studies.
01:11And then at the tail end, there are
01:15massive numbers of comments that then
01:16have to be responded to that require additional work.
01:20It is just a very long process that is, at this point,
01:26managed by very dedicated, very capable federal employees that
01:30are stretched very thin.
01:32We hope that those federal employees will still
01:34be here after the next several months,
01:36but that's another subject.
01:42How do we look on cooperation with
01:44our international neighbors?
01:45For example, Canada, Australia, allies.
01:51Do we need to have more cooperative relationships
01:54in that situation, Mr. Summers?
01:57Talk about mining as an international factor.
02:03And I think that we do have to distinguish between countries
02:06that are allies and countries that
02:07have similar environmental and labor standards like Canada
02:10and Australia, as you mentioned.
02:13A good example of cooperation that we see in Utah
02:15is the production of tellurium.
02:17So tellurium is mined at the Bingham Canyon mine,
02:19Rio Tinto Canyon, Rio Tinto Kennecott mine.
02:22And then it's actually sent to Montreal for processing
02:25and then is sent back to Utah and to Arizona
02:27for manufacturing.
02:28I don't want to calculate the tariff on that.
02:31Sure.
02:32But I do think that, again, finding ways
02:35to utilize allied supply chains and also utilize
02:38existing facilities is very important,
02:41because in many cases, you're going
02:43to be able to get to actual production much quicker
02:45if you're utilizing existing facilities
02:47than if you're trying to build them
02:49from greenfield operations.
02:50Absolutely.
02:50So one word that hasn't been mentioned much this morning
02:55is processing.
02:56My understanding, for example, that a great deal of lithium
02:58comes from Australia, but something
03:00like 85% of the processing is done in China.
03:03Should we also be talking about processing
03:05when we're talking about mining?
03:09Aren't they interrelated in a way?
03:10Because ultimately, we need the product,
03:12the result of the processing.
03:15Absolutely.
03:15If you're producing extracted minerals here in the US,
03:18but you're having to send them to China or another unfriendly
03:21nation for processing, then you haven't really
03:23solved the problem at all.
03:24So processing needs to be part of this conversation
03:27at every level.
03:27So that should be part of what we're
03:29discussing here in terms of bottlenecks in that process.
03:35And I think you touched on this, but my notes
03:39were, who pays for abandoned mine cleanup?
03:41And it sounds like it sort of catches catch can, Mr. Wood.
03:45There's no steady source of available funds.
03:49That's right.
03:50And I would be remiss not to mention again
03:53that the mining industry has been
03:54very supportive of helping to clean up abandoned mines,
03:56so long as they don't have to hold the liability.
03:59But that's the big problem, is we
04:01don't have a dedicated funding source
04:03to get ahead of these abandoned mines that dot the landscape.
04:08One sort of parenthetical question, Mr. Summers,
04:10you mentioned a mine that was producing
04:12a lot of important minerals.
04:13And there were other minerals there
04:15which could be produced at that mine.
04:18If you're going after lithium and you discover tellurium,
04:23do you have to go through another permitting process?
04:25Or can that mine expand its production
04:28of additional materials without additional delay?
04:32To be honest, that depends on the operation
04:34and depends on the regulatory environment within the state
04:38where that operation is taking place.
04:39But in most cases, it is easier to go
04:43to produce new minerals from an existing permitted facility.
04:45Because in many cases, it's a matter
04:47of finding ways through secondary recovery processes
04:51to pull other minerals out of a waste stream in many cases.
04:56And so again, it depends on the type of operation.
04:59But generally, you're better off and can
05:01get to actual production quicker if you're using
05:04existing permitted facilities.
05:06I'm out of time.
05:07I want to continue our discussion
05:09of net versus gross royalties.
05:12And if you would give us some written material
05:15on why mining should be treated different than oil and gas
05:20or coal in terms of the way the royalty is calculated.
05:23So we're out of time here, but look forward
05:25to having maybe a page or two on that subject.
05:29I can point you to materials we submitted to the committee
05:32before, and I'll do that.