Alaska, Montana Mines Now Prioritized, Boosting US Mineral Independence

Our energy and mineral independence is growing, it seems, day by day.

America's treasure chests are opening up even further, in Alaska and elsewhere - like, for instance, Montana. Two projects, one in each of these states, have been placed on a federal priority listing called the FAST-41 program.

As part of the Trump administration's push to bolster domestic supplies of minerals critical to American automotive, defense, energy, and high-tech manufacturing, the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council (Permitting Council) has added the Nickolai in Alaska and Sheep Creek in Montana as transparency projects on the Federal Permitting Dashboard.
"I am excited to welcome the Nikolai Nickel and Sheep Creek projects to the FAST-41 program," said Permitting Council Executive Director Emily Domenech. "We are proud to support more mining projects that will strengthen the U.S. economy and reduce our reliance on foreign nations."
Established in 2015 by Title 41 of the Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act (FAST-41), the Permitting Council is a federal agency charged with improving the transparency and predictability of permitting critical infrastructure projects – including mines, natural gas pipelines, renewable energy, electricity transmission, telecommunications, and certain emerging technologies.

In Alaska, it's nickel, cobalt, and other strategic resources:

Lying on the southern flanks of the Alaska Range, approximately 130 miles southeast of Fairbanks, Alaska Energy Metals' Nikolai project hosts one of the largest known nickel-cobalt-platinum group metal (PGM)-chromium deposits in North America.
Based on drilling completed by Alaska Energy Metals and previous exploration companies, the Eureka deposit at Nikolai hosts:
• 1.19 billion metric tons of indicated resource averaging 0.21% (5.61 billion pounds) nickel.
• 2.09 billion metric tons of inferred resource averaging 0.2% (9.38 billion lb) nickel.
• Large quantities of copper, cobalt, PGMs, chromium, and iron byproducts are found in both resource categories.
The chromium, cobalt, copper, nickel, palladium, and platinum found in this world-class-sized deposit are all on the 2025 list of minerals critical to U.S. economic development, energy, and national security.

In Montana, its gallium and other rare-earth minerals:

High-grade critical mineral values at Sheep Creek were confirmed by Idaho National Laboratories in 2024. Highlights from nine rock samples collected over a two-mile-long mineralized corridor at Sheep Creek include:
• 13.45% total rare earth elements (TREE) and 250 parts per million gallium.
• 13.82% TREE and 300 ppm gallium.
• 17.78% TREE and 350 ppm gallium.
On average, the samples returned 9.9% TREE, including 2.4% neodymium and praseodymium – the key rare earths used in high-power magnets for EV motors, defense systems, and other high-tech devices.

Gallium in particular is vital. At present, China produces 98 percent of the global supply of gallium. The United States imports, at present, 100 percent of gallium used in American industry.

U.S. Energy Dominance Advances With Epic Alaska LNG Partnership

This is winning on steroids. Not only do these exploration and extraction efforts reduce our dependency on countries that aren't very friendly - like China - but they create good-paying jobs in an industry that has been badly neglected over the last few years.

Nickel is used in the manufacture of stainless steel, in batteries, and in a wide range of alloys. Gallium has a wide range of industrial uses, from light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to semiconductors. These are all critical minerals and metals, and we are currently dependent on other countries for them.

That's not an acceptable situation, not with China growing increasingly bellicose, not with Russia's Tsar Vladimir I feeling his oats. The more self-sufficient the United States can be in the extraction and refining of these minerals, the better.

We'll take the jobs here in Alaska, too.

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