Tag: natural resources

Trump’s sons claim share in mining group supported by US govt

A shell company backed by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump has agreed to a merger with a mining group that secured up to $1.6 billion from the US government in 2025 to facilitate the extraction of tungsten in Kazakhstan, the Financial Times has reported.

The agreement between Skyline Builders group, in which US President Donald Trump’s sons hold a stake, and Cove Kaz Capital group was signed on Thursday. The newly-formed entity will trade on Nasdaq as Kaz Resources, according to a statement.

Cove Kaz currently controls 70% of the Northern Katpar and Upper Kairakty tungsten deposits in central Kazakhstan, believed to be one of the largest in the world. Last year, the federally-funded US Export-Import Bank and the Development Finance Corporation committed to invest heavily in the development of both projects.

The statement didn’t mention Trump’s sons, but the FT reported on Friday, citing informed sources, that they bought into Skyline last August via a special purpose vehicle run by a subsidiary of Dominari Securities. The size of their investment was not disclosed, but they increased it by $24 million in October.

Keep reading

$65B lithium mother lode hidden beneath Appalachian Mountains could supply US with power for centuries

They’ve hit the mother lode.

We may no longer need to rely on foreign batteries to power our electronics. Geologists have announced that the Appalachian Mountains could be hiding a sprawling multibillion-dollar cache of lithium that could last the US hundreds of years.

“This research shows that the Appalachians contain enough lithium to help meet the nation’s growing needs,” declared US Geological Survey Director Ned Mamula in a statement.

According to a map by the institution, this East Coast mountain range houses around 2.5 metric tons of this battery precursor, most of which is concentrated in the Carolinas, Maine and New Hampshire. Total value: around $64.4B dollars.

Per Bloomberg, the US imports nearly half of its consumption of lithium, which powers lithium-ion batteries that are used for everything from iPhones to vehicles and even aerospace alloys.

With this recent mineral motherlode, USGS officials estimate that we could supply 1.6 million grid-scale batteries — enough to power 130 million electric vehicles or supply 180 billion laptops for a collective thousands of years of global use.

It could also fuel 500 billion cellphones, the equivalent of 60 devices for every person on Earth.

All told, this haul is enough to replace 328 years of imports at least year’s level, providing “a major contribution to US mineral security, at a time when global lithium demand is rising rapidly,” said Mamula.

Keep reading

US Has No Leverage Against China in Rare Earths Market – Expert

China holds all the cards when it comes to rare earth elements (REE) extraction, processing, and supply, Jeff J. Brown, China expert and founder of the Seek Truth From Facts Foundation, tells Sputnik.

Ahead of US President Donald Trump’s visit to China, the nation’s Ministry of Natural Resources released data underscoring China’s achievements in the REE sector.

“China long ago did its homework and knew the value of REEs, across all sectors of science, technology, the space race, industry, manufacturing and military applictions,” Brown says. “They allocated huge resources to perfect not only extraction, but processing and downstream, discovering new sources underground.”

Presently, China controls 90% of the world’s REE processing and thus global supply chains and logisitcs. Moreover, the Chinese spent decades mastering techniques to achieve high-purity output at the lowest cost.

Why are REEs Important?

“REEs make the world go round,” Brown notes. “Without them, countries can’t build weapons, send astronauts into space, manufacture mobile phones, all kinds of electronic gadgetry, medical equipment, and thousands of other mundane to high-tech applications.”

The Chinese bet on the REE research – and it paid off, according to the pundit.

The West “sat on its hubristic laurels and did almost none of this,” using China as a reliable supplier.

Now the US is signing contracts worldwide to mine REE ore, but it’s struggling to catch up — the West remains far from becoming a high-volume processor on a par with China.

“The US has no real leverage at all, except the tired old playbook of boycotts, blockades, sanctions and tariffs,” Brown concludes.

Keep reading

Political Theatre – Solve Energy Crisis by Eliminating Fossil Fuels

Over 50 nations are gathering in Colombia to map out a future without oil, gas, and coal, all while the world is in the middle of an energy crisis driven by war, supply disruptions, and rising demand that cannot even be met today. The same governments pretending they can eliminate fossil fuels are quietly scrambling behind the curtain to secure more of them just to keep the lights on.

This is what happens when policy is driven by ideology instead of reality. I have warned repeatedly that there is no viable alternative capable of replacing fossil fuels at scale. This is not an opinion. It is a simple matter of physics and infrastructure. Wind and solar cannot provide baseload power. They are intermittent, unreliable, and require storage systems that do not exist at the level needed to sustain a modern industrial economy. Yet politicians stand up and pretend we can simply flip a switch and transition the entire world economy to renewables as if energy were some optional luxury.

What makes this entire agenda even more dangerous is that they are no longer speaking in vague terms, they are openly stating the objective. Ursula von der Leyen declared that “the global fossil fuel crisis must be a game-changer… let’s earn the clean ticket to heaven,” which is not economic policy, it is ideological rhetoric detached from reality. John Kerry has pushed that leaders must accelerate the “transition away from fossil fuels” or face catastrophe, while Ed Miliband continues to insist Net Zero is essential to eliminate dependence on traditional energy altogether. Then you have Ro Khanna advocating ending fossil fuel subsidies and halting new permits, which in practical terms means cutting supply before any viable replacement exists.

Yet even within their own ranks the cracks are showing. Tony Blair bluntly admitted that any strategy centered on phasing out fossil fuels in the near term is “doomed to fail.” They are publicly advancing an agenda that even insiders know cannot function in the real world.

What they refuse to admit is that every single modern economy depends on fossil fuels at its core. Transportation, agriculture, manufacturing, heating, electricity, all of it. You cannot remove that foundation without collapsing the structure built on top of it. Even now, as they hold conferences and make declarations, countries are reverting to coal because when crisis strikes, theory disappears and survival takes over. That is the reality they will never say out loud.

Keep reading

USA Rare Earth to Acquire Brazil’s Serra Verde in $2.8 Billion Deal

USA Rare Earth said on April 20 that it has agreed to acquire Brazil-based Serra Verde Group in a deal valued at approximately $2.8 billion, a significant move to expand production of rare-earth elements outside Asia.

The company said it will purchase 100 percent of Serra Verde through a combination of $300 million in cash and 126.849 million shares of newly issued stock.

Based on USA Rare Earth’s closing share price of $19.95 on April 17, the transaction implies an equity value of about $2.8 billion for Serra Verde.

The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of 2026.

Barbara Humpton, CEO of USA Rare Earth, which is based in Stillwater, Oklahoma, described the acquisition as a step toward a global rare earth platform.

She said that Serra Verde’s Pela Ema mine is “a one-of-a-kind asset and the only producer outside Asia capable of supplying all four magnetic rare earths at scale.”

Humpton also pointed to Serra Verde’s existing agreements, noting that its importance is underscored by a 15-year offtake agreement backed by U.S. government-linked financing and private capital, covering all of its Phase 1 production of key materials such as neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, and terbium.

Rare earths are minerals critical for modern technologies, including electric vehicles, wind turbines, semiconductors, and defense systems. In particular, so-called heavy rare earths such as dysprosium and terbium are essential for producing high-performance magnets used in advanced equipment.

Currently, much of the world’s supply and processing capacity is in China, according to the International Energy Agency.

“Rare earths represent a strategic nexus where national and energy security, and technological supremacy, converge,” Serra Verde CEO Thras Moraitis said in the April 20 statement. “The Western rare earth sector stands at a critical inflection point, as governments and strategic industries urgently seek reliable sources of critical rare earths—particularly scarce heavy rare earths.”

By combining Serra Verde’s mining operations with USA Rare Earth’s processing and magnet-making capabilities, Humpton said, the company aims to create “a fully integrated platform” to support global supply security.

Keep reading

The Strait Of Hormuz Crisis Exposes A Fatal Flaw In Economic Thinking

A priest, an engineer, and an economist are stranded on a desert island. The first order of business is to get some food. The priest suggests that they all pray. The practical-minded engineer suggests that the three men make a net to catch some fish. But where will they find the necessary materials? The priest and the engineer turn to the economist and ask him if he has any ideas. The economist replies, “Assume a fish.”

This well-worn economist joke summarizes one of the chief flaws in contemporary economic theory.

That theory almost completely ignores the role of physical resources, assuming they will always be available in the quantities we need at prices we can afford at the time we need them. When those resources aren’t available, that theory begrudgingly accepts that there will be some damage to economic activity, but tends to greatly underestimate the impact.

This conceptual flaw explains why economists in most financial institutions and governments, and thus investors, are not especially alarmed at the loss of energy resources, as stock market indices remain not too far from their recent highs.

For a good summary of how contemporary economic theory goes off the rails, Australian economist Steve Keen offers a mercifully brief and comprehensible explanation. Here I will relate one critical part of that explanation. About 5.7 percent of U.S. GDP is devoted to procuring and distributing energy. Most economists will tell you that a 10 percent decline in energy availability would have a small effect on the U.S. economy. They would take the percentage of the economy devoted to energy, in this case 5.7 percent, and multiply it by 10 percent to arrive at a 0.57 percent reduction in economic activity.

This conclusion is utter nonsense and not even close to what the effects would be.

The reason is that energy is the master resource. It cannot be treated like other resources. Energy is the resource that makes all other resources available. Nothing gets done without energy. The correlation between economic activity and energy use is 0.9 (where 1.0 represents a perfect correlation). This should come as no surprise. When the economy is growing, energy use grows with it as energy fuels the economic activity that pushes growth.

What this implies is that a 10 percent reduction in energy availability is much more likely to result in a decline in economic activity closer to 10 percent than to one-half percent.  For comparison, the real GDP of the United States fell 4.3 percent during the Great Recession, which lasted from December 2007 through June 2009.

So, how much energy is currently being denied to the global economy by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz? No one knows for certain. We do know that liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports from Qatar were previously transiting through the strait. And, close to 20 percent of the world’s oil supply was also passing through the strait on a daily basis.

Keep reading

The US refinery now processing Venezuelan oil

The Minerva Gloria is docked at a wharf in the Mississippi Sound, not far from the US’s vast oil reserves in the Gulf of Mexico.

The ship, 820ft (250m) long, painted navy and burgundy, is carrying precious cargo from Venezuela that, just six months ago, would have been impossible to bring to the US – 400,000 barrels of crude oil.

Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves. Under Venezuela’s former president Nicholas Maduro oil exports had dropped significantly, due to a lack of investment. Then came US sanctions against any imports from the Latin American country.

But US President Donald Trump vowed to tap those reserves after the US military captured Maduro in a surprise, night-time raid in January.

Now the oil is flowing again in Venezuela. In March, the country’s monthly crude exports surpassed one million barrels per day. The first time since September.

As the world reels from the impact on global energy prices caused by Iran blocking the Strait of Hormuz, big oil and gas companies like Chevron are now importing Venezuelan crude oil by the shipload.

“It’s a big deal not only for Chevron but the entire Gulf region,” says Tim Potter. He is the director for Chevron’s oil refinery in Pascagoula, Mississippi, the company’s largest operation in the US. It is also the only major US oil company currently operating in Venezuela.

Together this means that Chevron can extract its own Venezuelan oil, process it itself, and get it directly to the US consumer.

“It’s a pretty big incentive for us to run it,” Potter says. “The refinery was really designed, and we invested in the refinery, to run heavy oils like from Venezuela.”

Keep reading

POWDER KEG EUROPE: Serbian President Vučić Says Explosives Were Found Near a Pipeline Carrying Gas From Russia to Serbia and Hungary

Serbia in the eye of the storm.

While the eyes of the world are fixated on the developing crisis in the Middle East, Europe is still getting more dangerous by the day, with an energy crisis worsening the socio-political mess and the divisions over the war in Ukraine.

In this context, countries that lead independent foreign policies, like Serbia, are under relentless pressure.

Today, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić came out publicly to disclose that explosives were found near a pipeline that carries gas from Russia to Serbia and Hungary.

Euronews reported:

“Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić announced on Sunday morning that army and police found explosives that had been placed near a pipeline that carries gas to Serbia and Hungary.

He said that ‘two large packages of explosives with detonators’ were found inside backpacks in northern Serbia’s Kanjiza, ‘a few hundred meters from the gas pipeline’.

The Balkan Stream pipeline is an extension of the TurkStream pipeline, and transfers Russian gas to both Serbia and Hungary.”

Keep reading

Trump Says He Wants to “Take the Oil” in Iran

President Donald Trump has suggested the United States may try to take over Iran’s oil the way it did with Venezuela’s, per a Financial Times interview.

“To be honest with you, my favourite thing is to take the oil in Iran, but some stupid people back in the US say: ‘Why are you doing that?’ But they’re stupid people,” Trump told the FT.

“Maybe we take Kharg Island, maybe we don’t. We have a lot of options,” the U.S. president also told the publication, adding. “It would also mean we had to be there [in Kharg Island] for a while.”

Kharg Island is Iran’s oil hub, handling 90% of the country’s oil exports. The island lies beyond the Strait of Hormuz, however, which would make taking it a challenge, as noted by various military experts. According to official Pentagon statements, the U.S. has bombed as many as 90 targets on Kharg Island but these have not included oil facilities or infrastructure, per President Trump himself.

“We can do that on five minutes’ notice. It’ll be over,” Trump said earlier this month, referring to the pipelines connecting mainland Iran to Kharg Island. “Just one simple word, and the pipes will be gone too. But it’ll take a long time to rebuild that.”

That one simple word has yet to be pronounced, it seems, even as Trump told the FT on Sunday that “I don’t think they have any defence. We could take it [Kharg Island] very easily.”

Keep reading

IRGC targets US-linked aluminum industries in coordinated missile-drone strike

The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has announced targeting two industries connected to US military and aerospace sectors in a combined missile and drone operation.

In a statement on Saturday, the Corps said the strikes were carried out jointly by its Aerospace Force and Navy in response to “the malicious actions of the US-Zionist enemy targeting the industrial infrastructure of our beloved country from the Persian Gulf’s littoral states.”

The two targeted facilities were identified as the Emirates Aluminum (EMAL) plant and the Aluminum Bahrain (ALBA) plant.

The statement highlighted their strategic significance, noting that EMAL houses the world’s longest aluminum production line with a capacity of 1.3 million tons, while ALBA operates with American investment and shareholding. The latter, it added, “plays a significant role in supplying the military-industrial production of the US terrorist army.”

Keep reading