USGS rejects request by six U.S. senators to add copper to Critical Minerals List

The Copper Development Association provided the analysis used by the senators and was highly critical of the USGS decision not to list copper on the CML. According to their website, membership in the Copper Development Association is open to copper producers worldwide and to brass mill, wire mill and foundry fabricators of copper and copper alloys with production facilities in the USA.

“Despite clear data showing that copper’s supply risk score is now above the threshold for automatic inclusion on the 2022 Critical Minerals list, USGS sent well-crafted letters to a bipartisan group of congressmen and senators filled with misleading arguments that were not part of its own official 2022 methodology, or consistent with the spirit or letter of the law, to justify a decision to forego immediately adding copper to the list,” Andrew G. Kireta, Jr., CDA’s president and CEO, stated in a May 22 press release.

The senators request came at the same time as two major Arizona copper mining projects proposed by foreign mining companies need approvals from state and federal agencies before they can begin operations. Arizona produces more than 70 percent of the nation’s copper.

Toronto-based Hudbay Minerals Inc. is seeking state environmental permits to construct the $1.9 billion Copper World/Rosemont mine complex in the Santa Rita Mountains 35 miles southeast of Tucson. Anglo-Australian miners BHP Group and Rio Tinto are waiting for the U.S. Forest Service to issue an environmental report that would allow their Resolution Copper Company joint venture  to construct the Resolution Copper Mine about 70 miles of east of Phoenix. BHP and Rio Tinto are members of the Copper Development Association.

Conservation groups and Indian Tribes have opposed both projects and sharply criticized the senators’ efforts to influence the analysis used to determine which minerals are included on the CML. A coalition opposed to the Resolution Mine urged the USGS to adhere to its quantitative and qualitative analysis that determined copper should not be included on the CML. The anti-Resolution mine coalition includes the San Carlos Apache Tribe, Arizona Mining Reform Coalition, Patagonia Area Resource Alliance and Earthworks.

“Successfully pressuring the Department of Interior to manipulate its rigorous CML analysis and place copper on the CML for political reasons would provide a convenient justification to senators to support the Resolution Mine, regardless of the massive negative impacts to Indigenous culture, the environment and rapidly diminishing water supplies in the midst of a megadrought gripping the Southwest,” the coalition stated in a letter to Secretary Haaland.

The USGS letter to the senators stated that the country “has significant domestic copper production and a diversity of foreign supply sources.” The USGS estimates that the United States mined 1.3 million tons of recoverable copper in 2022 from 25 mines. American imports of refined copper come predominantly from Chile (64%), Canada (20%), and Mexico (11%), reliable trade partners with whom the U.S. has free trade agreements, the USGS stated.

The USGS also noted that the United States supplied about a third of its domestic copper consumption requirements from recycling in 2022 and cited this as “a good example of the potential for secondary production to mitigate supply chain risks.”

The United States currently exports 25% of the raw copper concentrate extracted from its mines for additional processing at giant furnaces called smelters, according to the USGS 2022 annual copper report. The U.S. only has two operating copper smelters that are at capacity. China is by far the world’s leading importer of copper concentrate and operates 9 of the 20 largest copper smelters in the world.