Senators Criticize BLM’s Draft Mine Permitting Metrics
Washington, DC – U.S. Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Joe Manchin (D-WV), John Barrasso (R-WY), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), and Jim Risch (R-ID) recently sent a letter to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) expressing their disappointment with the agency’s woefully inadequate draft Mining Performance Metrics. The draft metrics, which were delivered a year later than statutorily required, show minimal effort to make any improvements to the broken federal permitting process.
Excerpts from the letter:
“We find BLM’s proposed suggestions to be woefully insufficient to support any meaningful progress toward more efficient permitting. In fact, BLM’s first and second proposed metrics fall outside of the established permitting process and continue the agency’s efforts to increase the burdens of project applicants before they can enter it. BLM cannot frontload the pre-permitting process, extending the time and cost burdens for affected stakeholders, and then claim that it has expedited the permitting process. This is the definition of shifting, not shortening, the permitting process and deliberately disregards BLM’s statutory mandate.”
“We must have access to critical minerals on federal lands. The Biden administration’s own policies are driving up demand for minerals while simultaneously raising the odds of shortages. A secure domestic supply is essential for our economic competitiveness, national security, and global leadership on a range of technologies. BLM’s failure to address permitting delays adds to the price disparity between U.S. and foreign minerals, enabling and incentivizing mineral sourcing based solely on price and availability—without any regard for the human rights and environmental atrocities that occur in many foreign countries upon which we now rely.”
The full text of the letter can be read here.
Background:
Section 40206 of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), which features the permitting provisions from Murkowski’s American Mineral Security Act, requires BLM and the U.S. Forest Service to develop performance metrics to improve their permitting efficiency and effectiveness. IIJA also requires the agencies to submit an annual report to show their progress in improving permitting. BLM released its draft metrics more than a year late, in February 2024, and published them on its website rather than in the Federal Register.
In March 2024, the Department of the Interior’s (DOI) Inspector General (IG) released a report finding that DOI’s “Interagency Working Group on Mining Regulations, Laws, and Permitting did not fully meet IIJA Section 40206 reporting and performance metric requirements.” The IG found that DOI did not meet the IIJA Section 40206 performance metric deadline or its associated reporting deadline, but was unable to review the substance of the metrics because they had not been released.
Just last week, S&P Global issued a report on mine development timelines, underscoring the difficulties of federal permitting. S&P Global found that “the U.S. has the second longest mine development times in the world, at almost 29 years on average from first discovery to first production.” According to the report, just three mines have come online in the U.S. since 2002, and none of them are on federal lands (to include BLM and Forest Service lands).
###
