America's Copper Revolution Happening Now in Arizona

Copper is a critical resource. Copper is used in a wide variety of industrial applications, ranging from cell phones to automobiles, and the United States produces only about half of the copper we consume. The Trump administration, at the president's direction, made the extraction of our country's mineral wealth a priority. However, now there's a new operation that will be open in only three years, instead of the usual decades-long process.

Why? Because this new Ivanhoe Electric operation is working on private land.

The United States has a copper problem. Simply put, the U.S. uses a lot of it and there aren’t enough American mines to pull it out of the ground fast enough. But Ivanhoe Electric is moving toward becoming the first U.S.-based company to open a copper mine stateside in over a decade – and with copper prices shooting to record highs, the timing couldn’t be better.

President Trump has designated copper as a critical mineral, which seems obvious, given the wide application of uses - and we don't produce enough on our own to meet America's needs.

President Donald Trump issued an executive order in March hoping to add copper to the critical minerals list, which would expedite permitting and offer tax incentives to mining companies. And on July 8, the president announced a 50% tariff on copper imports starting Aug. 1.
The U.S. only produces about half the copper it uses, ranking fifth in production behind Chile, Democratic Republic of Congo, Peru and China. Part of the reason is that it takes an average of 29 years for copper mines to begin production, due to a lengthy permitting and approval process.

Having the operation on private land is an advantage, just as it is with gas and oil, as working on private land sidesteps a lot of the federal permitting processes, bidding on leases, and so forth.

But Ivanhoe Electric’s Santa Cruz Project, about 40 miles south of Phoenix in Casa Grande, Arizona, aims to be up and running by 2028, only eight years since it started the project.
"It's like tomorrow in mining terms. It's incredibly, incredibly fast and incredibly efficient," said Taylor Melvin, president and CEO of the Tempe-based company. "One of our great advantages is being on private land here in Arizona. It allows us to have a much more streamlined permitting process, which allows us to have a more accelerated timetable to construction and production."

But here's the best part: While there are only two copper smelters in the United States, the ore produced in the Santa Cruz project can be extracted by leaching. The mine will produce pure metallic copper, ready for use.

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Copper is a critical resource, and with the advent of huge data centers and AI installations, and the resulting expansion of the electric grid, not to mention defense applications, our need for copper is only going to increase. This Santa Cruz project will employ 900 full-time workers, bringing badly needed jobs to the area.

For too long, we have outsourced our production of commodities like copper. Granted, copper is a dirty metal to produce, especially in the leaching process, but we can either outsource the mess or, as a nation, take responsibility for it ourselves. It's better to have as much production in domestic hands as we can manage.

Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump’s leadership and bold policies, America’s economy is back on track.

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