During a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Rep. Michael Rulli (R-OH) spoke about the permitting process for rare earth mining on federal lands.
00:02The question would be for Ms. Sweeney and Mr. Hammond.
00:06What factors does a company consider when they're thinking about what location in the United States of America that a processing or refinery facility would be in?
00:18So what states specifically?
00:20Or what, so what would be the parameters or the factors when you're looking at different locations?
00:25I mean, the continental United States is so vast in areas and resources and highways and stuff.
00:31What factors would play into that development?
00:34So certainly, or grade would be a big factor.
00:39But we certainly, there are companies that try to avoid federal lands at all costs because the permitting process for federal lands takes so much longer.
00:51Because there's more agencies involved and it almost always triggers NEPA, whereas if you're on state or private lands, you can move your project forward that much more quickly.
01:07Mr. Hammond, do you have a comment?
01:08Sure.
01:09So echoing what Katie said, with mining, you have to go where the minerals are, right?
01:13It sounds like common sense, but that's just the way it is.
01:16They're not coming to you.
01:17You have to go to them, but in particular, where you choose is also going to be a matter of where the most favorable, where's the most favorable regulatory environment?
01:27And I agree with Katie as well.
01:29For many people, doing that on federal land is going to be more a problem than it's worth.
01:33So you're going to look for state or private.
01:34Mr. Hammond, in your written statement, you said that you decided that the company decided to skip out on development and opportunities on federal land when the development was written as an existing project on state or private land.
01:48I know in the state of Ohio, a company from West Virginia, Infinity, was granted the right to drill on state lands.
01:55And there was a very compassionate, very conscious acknowledgement of the preservation of the environmental impact.
02:04I think anyone that's involved with minerals, we understand that Mother Earth needs to be protected at all costs.
02:09In this case in particular, I think they decided that there was already a private piece of property that was right next to it that was already doing drilling.
02:18So they decided to use that property to pay for an additional contract with people that they didn't have to because they already had the state contract.
02:26So in all due respect to the preservation of an environment, they chose to go on the private land and do horizontal drilling into the state land so there would be no surface impact on the state property.
02:38I thought this was a logical approach to the pathway forward for the development of minerals in America.
02:43But we see that there's a big difference when you look at private land, state land, and federal land.
02:48So I think you already started the parameters of how it looks like when you're playing around with the federal land, with the hiccups and the road bumps that we have in place for that.
02:57Do you see a pathway forward, either one of you, on how we get past these roadblocks?
03:05More efficient permitting for federal lands, I think, is the direction we need to go.
03:10That means more efficient NEPA reviews, environmental assessments, environmental impact statements.
03:19You know, the Congress has already told the agencies how long it should take.
03:27And I think that there have been some projects where those deadlines have been ignored.
03:35Or the companies have been told that they need to request an extension rather than trying to push those timelines.
03:48Excellent.
03:49Mr. Hamm?
03:49So we need people to implement what Congress told them to do.
03:54Sure.
03:55I think Katie's right.
03:56It comes down to permitting reform.
03:58But one thing in particular that I was focusing on in my testimony is concurrent review or consecutive reviews as opposed to parallel or concurrent.
04:06And that's the example I was talking about with respect to uranium, where a project proponent was going through the process but then kept having new requirements dumped on them and extending out the time of the review.
04:17So, I mean, what I think will be most effective is if you tell a project proponent on day zero what exactly you're going to need to get through all the way through a permitting process, that's the fair way to do it and that's the efficient way to do it.
04:33Thank you so much, Chairman.
04:34I yield my time.
04:35I think the gentleman, the chair now recognizes the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Allen, for five minutes for his questions.
04:45Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this important hearing.
