Which projects may gain if Trump overhauls permitting?

In early February, two weeks after President Donald Trump’s inauguration and flurry of executive orders, Northern Dynasty Minerals (TSX: NDM; NYSE: NAK) CEO Ron Thiessen sent an optimistic letter to shareholders.

“Executive orders like this [“Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential”] from President Trump give us and the rest of the mining industry comfort that this is an administration with which our industry can do business, for the benefit of all,” Thiessen wrote.

“We will look on with interest as they turn these words into actions, noting that for serious progress to be made, staffing of the various relevant agency departments must be completed, as those are the people who will be doing the actual work.”

Northern Dynasty’s project in southwestern Alaska has faced fierce resistance due to potential environmental and social impacts including threats to the local salmon fishery. It’s placed Pebble  – which could become the largest copper, gold and molybdenum mine in North America – in permitting purgatory. While Trump’s executive order doesn’t specifically name Pebble, Thiessen calls the order “a very good start.”

The CEO is part of a growing chorus of mining companies expressing optimism surrounding the new administration’s plans to overhaul the permitting process. According to a June 2024 report by S&P Global, the U.S. has the second-longest average development times in the world of the 23 countries they evaluated.

Copper-rich

In December, Australia’s South32 (ASX: S32) was encouraged that permitting policy updates and approval of a controversial industrial road could unlock access to the Ambler Mining District. It’s a copper-rich region in northwest Alaska where the company has development rights.

A month later, U.K.-based Rio Tinto (ASX, LON, NYSE: RIO) CEO Jakob Stausholm said the company was hopeful the new administration would grant the final permits to its Resolution copper project in Arizona. The company says the Resolution mine, which has been locked in a 12-year permitting battle, has the potential to supply more than a quarter of U.S. copper needs. 

Stausholm told The Financial Times in January that the project now had good chances to progress.  

According to S&P Global Commodity Insights data, there are more than 50 feasibility-stage or preproduction projects in 20 U.S. states that could see momentum gains, should mine permitting processes be sped up.

Anthony Milewski, founder of Black Vulcan Resources, a boutique advisory firm for the mining, energy and agriculture sectors, says there’s “excitement and optimism in a way that just wasn’t there under the Biden administration.”

Critical mineral

But catalyzing that optimism into action is a different story. He points to the Critical Mineral Consistency Act passed in the U.S. House of Representatives in November which recognized copper as a critical mineral.

“For some of the large copper, gold and potentially nickel projects in Alaska, Trump is incredibly bullish and people do think that he’s going to make a difference in permitting,” Milewski says. “You are going to see Trump moves swiftly… it’s easier for him to wave his hand.”

He notes the federal government owns about 60% of the land in Alaska and points to Wyoming as another potential beneficiary. The state could see the permitting process sped up, positioning it as a significant uranium producer. But there are other jurisdictions where fast-tracking permitting might not be realistic, he said.

“In southern Oregon, there’s a big uranium deposit, and I believe there’s a lithium deposit as well,” Milewski says. “Oregon is an extremely liberal state…can the federal government help there? What’s going to happen?”

Scot Anderson, office managing partner at Womble Bond Dickinson US LLP in Denver frequently handles arbitrations, litigation, and regulatory enforcement actions related to energy, mining, oil and gas. He’s been following the issue closely and echoes Milewski.

“Part of what the Trump administration is trying to do is to streamline the [National Environmental Policy Act] process, carve out some of the hooks and some of the analysis on environmental impacts to make the process narrower and more focused,” Anderson says. “One of the executive orders basically tells the Council of Environmental Quality to rescind its NEPA regulations.”

Legal challenges

Anderson says it’s a wait-and-see moment but it’s likely there will be a legal challenge to that. He also points to the arduous task of permitting reform. Agencies can be directed to make things more efficient but the system surrounding permitting is established in formally promulgated rules.

“It can’t be done just by executive order,” says the litigator. “You can’t just make a rule go away by a guidance document…you can limit it, curtail it, and manage it,” Anderson says.

But if the rule has gone through notice and comment rule-making, there’s a process to change the rule.

“You have to do a notice of the proposed rule, take public comment and address public comment, then the agency issues the final rule,” he says. “And that’s two years at a minimum just to get all that done.”

Lack of staff

Anderson says another element that could dampen ambitions to speed up permitting is the culling of federal agency staff.

“As you start taking bodies out of the federal agencies and reducing staff, that’s going to create more of a bottleneck,” he says.

As part of Trump’s “Unleashing American Energy” executive order, the new administration says it’s hoping to move from politicization surrounding permitting to science-based decision making.

Northern Dynasty CEO Thiessen’s letter to shareholders follows a similar thread.

“It is not ideal that in many instances the (federal) agencies have gone from being unbiased regulators to being advocates for special interest groups, but that is a topic of discussion for another day,” Thiessen wrote.

“It would be great if the federal agencies followed the established permitting laws and regulations, which are already among the most stringent in the world (from an environmental, labour and transparency perspective), and hopefully they will going forward.”