Mike Lee Claims ‘Flyspecking’ Of Federal Land Development Does Not Help ‘Environmental Quality’

2 days ago

During a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) questioned witnesses about issues in land development.

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Transcript

00:00Mr. Summers, I'd like to start with you. Last month I introduced a bill called the

00:05Critical Mineral Consistency Act, and I did this in order to try to align the

00:11Department of the Interior's critical mineral list with the Department of

00:14Energy's critical materials list. Can you explain for us, Mr. Summers, why both

00:22critical minerals and critical materials are essential to to the United States,

00:28particularly with regard to our economic, energy, and national security?

00:32Absolutely. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I applaud you for introducing this

00:40particular piece of legislation because the disparities between the

00:45lists that the federal government has maintained, especially between the DOI

00:48lists and the DOE lists, has been perplexing to the mining industry for a

00:52number of years now. And in many cases, again, when you're talking about critical

00:56minerals specifically, a lot of these critical minerals, as I mentioned in my

00:59testimony, are co-located with with base metals and precious metals and other

01:03things that may not appear on either of these lists. But in particular, in the

01:07case of Utah, again, our most productive copper mine is also our most productive

01:12critical mineral mine. And so making sure that you have equal consideration from

01:17the federal government for both the critical minerals and minerals like

01:21copper is really, really essential. The other issue that that comes to the fore

01:28here is that, you know, regardless of what national defense technology or energy

01:34transmission technology you're talking about, I mean, they're going to rely both

01:37on things like copper and on some of the more boutique minerals, you know, that are

01:41on the critical minerals list. And so, you know, while you have a large number of

01:45rare earths, for example, that will go into an F-35, which we have a lot of in Utah,

01:49you also need a lot of copper to make an F-35. You also need, you know, vanadium

01:53for the the alloys that go into those airframes. And so, again, having some

01:57consistency from the federal perspective when it comes to any potential fast

02:02track permitting or grants and research and other things is essential in order

02:07for us... Why is it a matter for us to try to produce those in the United States rather than

02:10importing them? Right, absolutely. I mean, again, as you've seen from the recent

02:14actions of China, I mean, if you have something like antimony, for example,

02:17that's banned, that prevents us from manufacturing munitions in the United

02:21States because those are critical to go into, again, munitions and national

02:25defense systems and other things. And so, it does become a national security risk

02:29if we're reliant on foreign producers and especially adversarial foreign

02:33producers for those minerals. Makes sense. Mr. Haddock, in your testimony you noted

02:39that Nevada, where Barrick operates, is a state with a lot of federal land. And Utah

02:47faces, of course, a similar challenge with 67% of our land being owned by the

02:51federal government. When it comes to mineral development, what additional

02:56hurdles do companies face when trying to develop these things when they're

03:00operating on federal land as compared to either state land or private land? The

03:07additional hurdle is permitting. It's the timeline for permitting. The permitting

03:12timelines on state or federal land would be much quicker. And then, of

03:18course, the litigation risk on the tail end where almost every project is

03:21litigated. It makes it very difficult to spend a lot of money. Like some projects

03:28you would spend half a billion dollars before you get to the point of permitting

03:31it. That's a lot of money to sit there for a long time. But when you're going

03:36in to operate on either state land or private land, there's still permitting

03:40required. There's still a potential litigation risk. Tell me how that risk

03:44and the corresponding delays compare between the two. There is kind of a

03:51broader range of litigation risk because of, number one, NEPA. The agencies, the

03:59federal agencies that administer the public lands, do an absolutely great job

04:06of bringing together mountains of data, analyzing all the range of issues that

04:12they have to arrange under, that they have to consider under the various laws.

04:16But what tends to happen in those cases is that the courts tend to flyspeck the

04:21EISs and nitpick until they find one issue that they don't think has been

04:26adequately addressed. And then you're back to supplemental EIS. Okay, so does

04:32that suggest that the additional time consumed in the federal process doesn't

04:37necessarily produce a cleaner, safer outcome? It's more flyspecking and

04:45time-consuming, but not necessarily with a corresponding benefit to environmental

04:51quality. And if this is the case, how does this impact, how does that situation

04:57compounded by recent court decisions, how does that impact investment in

05:02project development? Well, it makes it harder to invest, but you're

05:06absolutely right. NEPA was enacted before many of the

05:10detailed federal environmental laws that have performance standards. And what

05:14commonly happens is, whether you're working on state land or federal or

05:20private land or federal land, you have to comply with all those laws. What typically

05:24happens through an EIS process is additional mitigation measures are

05:27imposed, additional performance standards are imposed, and then they're litigated

05:31over. So that's kind of the additional burden from that.

05:37Thank you. My time's expired.

Mike Lee Claims ‘Flyspecking’ Of Federal Land Development Does Not Help ‘Environmental Quality’

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