NMA Mining Minute 2-5-2026
NMA Mining Minute
Coming out of yesterday’s meetings in Washington, which brought together representatives from more than 50 countries to discuss minerals, Vice President JD Vance unveiled plans to create a trade bloc for critical minerals, specifically proposing coordinated price floors. In making the proposal, Vance said, “We want to eliminate that problem of people flooding into our markets with cheap critical minerals to undercut our domestic manufacturers…We will establish reference prices for critical minerals at each stage of production,” He said. Also coming out of yesterday’s meetings, the...
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NMA Mining Minute 2-4-2026
NMA Mining Minute
The Associated Press reports on China’s massive build out of coal power in 2025, noting that more than 50 large coal units were commissioned in 2025, up from less than 20 a year over the previous decade. Last year China commissioned more coal power capacity than India did over the entire past decade. The move is part of the country’s efforts to stay ahead of massive demand coming from its efforts to be a global leader in artificial intelligence and manufacturing. Today Secretary of State Marco Rubio will host the inaugural Critical Minerals Ministerial at the Department of State here in...
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NMA Mining Minute 2-3-2026
NMA Mining Minute
The U.S. is now building a strategic minerals reserve. President Trump on Monday rolled out a $12 billion initiative, called operation Vault, to establish domestic stockpiles of strategic minerals, as the US looks to defang China’s mineral weapon. The reserve will be financed by $1.67 billion in private funds and a $10 billion loan from the U.S. Export-Import Bank. EXIM said that the reserve will be a public-private partnership that will store essential raw materials in facilities across the U.S. The strategic reserve is designed to bolster civilian manufacturing needs and already involves a...
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NMA Mining Minute 2-2-2026
NMA Mining Minute
The bitter cold persists and the U.S. grid remains under immense strain. From the Carolinas to Northern Florida, utilities are asking customers to reduce power consumption today for fear demand overwhelms supply. This comes as President Trump’s reshuffled Federal Energy Regulatory Commission makes their first appearance before congressional lawmakers this week. Electricity reliability will be in the spotlight. And turning to metals markets, according to The Wall Street Journal, Friday saw the worst day for gold and silver since 1980. The selloff came as reports broke that President Trump had...
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NMA Mining Minute 1-30-2026
NMA Mining Minute
At a cabinet meeting yesterday, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright briefed President Trump on the vital role coal has played in keeping the lights on across the country over the past week. And speaking of reliability, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation yesterday issued its 2026 Long-Term Reliability Assessment, which found that by 2029, nearly two-thirds of the country will move into a “high risk” category, with power reserves dropping below safety margins, bringing a risk of power shortages. The national Mining Association’s CEO Rich Nolan commented on the report...
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NMA Mining Minute 1-28-2026
NMA Mining Minute
The story of the week continues to be the brutal cold spell that has settled across much of the U.S., putting added strain on a grid that is already stretched thin. In emergency orders issued in the past several days, Energy Secretary Chris Wright ordered plants to run without limits “to mitigate blackouts.” This is in addition to earlier orders DOE issued to keep several coal plants online that were set to prematurely retire. In the PJM region, which covers 13 states and Washington, D.C., coal, natural gas and nuclear have accounted for 83% of power around midday yesterday. The takeaway?...
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NMA-TV Mining Minute Special: House Passes CRA to End Minnesota Mining Ban
NMA Mining Minute
Last week Congressman Pete Stauber led the passage in the House of a key Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to reverse the prior administration’s unfounded withdrawal of more than 225,000 acres of federal lands from mining in Northern Minnesota. The resolution still needs to pass the Senate and be signed by the President. Our country is currently 100 percent import reliant for 15 minerals that our supply chains absolutely need—and we don’t have to be. We have these minerals right here at home, but our access is obstructed by outdated policies that don’t reflect the modern world....
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NMA-TV Mining Minute Special: Winter Storm
NMA Mining Minute
The first major winter storm of 2026 is here, with tens-of-millions of Americans across a 2,000 mile stretch of the country affected. And no surprise, the nation’s shaky supply of power is once again under the microscope. The challenges grid operators are facing in keeping the power flowing have been years in the making. Deeply unwise decisions to tear down essential power plants – namely coal capacity – have left the nation short of dispatchable power—and remarkably unprepared for rapidly rising power demand from electrification and the data center boom. The nation’s grid...
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NMA Mining Minute 1-23-2026
NMA Mining Minute
The massive storm expected this weekend is still approaching but high natural gas prices have already arrived. Throughout the week, prices have surged anywhere between 25 and 75 percent higher than the previous week. As grids across the country brace for major impacts to tens of millions of Americans, the importance of a balanced, divers fuel supply becomes all the more important in managing price shocks and keeping the lights on. Coal demand in Southeast Asia is growing at a faster pace than anywhere else in the world, with demand expected to rise by more than 4 percent a year through the end...
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NMA Mining Minute 1-22-2026
NMA Mining Minute
The House—following the steadfast leadership of Rep. Pete Stauber—yesterday passed legislation Wednesday that would reverse a Biden ban on mining on more than 225,000 acres of public lands in Minnesota. The important measure now moves to the Senate for action. Yesterday the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced a revision to regulations under the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act that would streamline the seabed mining permitting process. The existing process requires a two-step sequential application process, where an applicant first applies for an exploration...
info_outlineData Centers and mining go hand in hand, both because of the minerals and materials vital to build them, and because of the vast amounts of energy needed to run them. So let’s take a closer look at data centers, which are now in the headlines every day.
Microsoft yesterday announced a Community-First AI Infrastructure Initiative, which will have the company paying more for the electricity that serves its data centers, including paying for associated infrastructure costs. Microsoft said when making the announcement, “Especially when tech companies are so profitable, we believe that it’s both unfair and politically unrealistic for our industry to ask the public to shoulder added electricity costs for AI. Instead, we believe the long-term success of AI infrastructure requires that tech companies pay their own way for the electricity costs they create.”
President Trump clearly agrees, writing in a Truth Social post earlier this week, quote, “I never want Americans to pay higher Electricity bills because of Data Centers,” Trump wrote.
And there is a column in today’s Wall Street Journal that comments on widespread backlash against data centers and their impact on both rising electricity bills and the environment saying in part, “Data center moratoriums are the new fracking bans.”
The column smartly goes on to observe that the current energy debacle we’re in—which includes the challenge of meeting data center power needs--is very much in part due to the fact that, in the past decade, reliable coal and nuclear power generation were dismantled faster than they could be replaced with reliable alternatives and, quote, “too many CEOs failed to challenge energy policies they knew were unworkable.” End quote.
We have a chance to fix those policies now and make smart choices that support the growth of the technologies of the future.