On April 16, the U.S. Senate narrowly voted to overturn a 20-year mining ban imposed by the Biden administration on a national forest in northeastern Minnesota. The House had approved the bill on January 21, and President Trump signed it on April 27. The bill reverses the previous administration’s mining ban on 225,504 acres in the Superior National Forest and will allow Twin Metals to begin mining on land controlled by the federal government after obtaining leases from the Trump administration. The company wants to build a copper and nickel mine about five miles southwest of the wilderness area, where an estimated four billion tons of copper and nickel ore are located. The area is believed to hold one of the world’s largest undeveloped mineral deposits.
As The Epoch Times reports, in 2023, President Biden imposed the order to block mining in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and the surrounding watershed located in the Superior National Forest for 20 years, until 2043. The area is a world-class deposit, containing copper, nickel, platinum, palladium, gold, cobalt, and silver. Biden’s Department of the Interior blocked the nearly $3 billion mine over stated concerns about the safety of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness inside the national forest. The Biden administration, however, failed to properly transmit the required notice to Congress about the ban, allowing the vote to overturn the ban to come under the Congressional Review Act, which gives Congress the authority to review and disapprove federal actions within 60 Senate session days of the action’s submission.
The Sierra Club claims that mineral mining bans had not been considered rules that are subject to the Congressional Review Act in past administrations. It and other environmental groups plan to continue their fight against mining in the area. According to Twin Metals, the proposed mine would not cause ecological damage because it would comply with Minnesota’s strict water-quality standards.
According to the New York Times, Twin Metals has not yet decided where to send the copper extracted in Minnesota for processing. As of last year, China controlled more than half of global copper refining, according to data from research firm Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. Copper is a crucial component in many products, including cellphones, electric vehicles, and military aircraft, and it is essential for construction and electrification. The United States is heavily reliant on imported copper from Chile, Canada, and other countries.
Background
The leases sought by Twin Metals date back to the 1960s in an area outside the Boundary Waters wilderness, but within its watershed. The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) renewed the leases in 1984, and Twin Metals Mining sought an additional 10-year renewal after it acquired the leases in 2012. In 2016, the Obama administration’s Interior Department directed the BLM not to renew the leases amid the possibility of a mining ban in the region. The Trump administration later reversed course by issuing a legal opinion declaring the leases valid and extending them for 10 years.
In 2021, the Biden administration began a review of the potential impacts of mining on the “natural and cultural resources” of the area and placed a two-year pause on new leasing. The following year, Interior canceled the Twin Metals leases, arguing that the Trump-era decision had contained “significant legal deficiencies.” The Twin Metals mining company sued the Biden administration, calling its actions unlawful and contradictory to the nation’s need for “clean” energy. According to Twin Metals’ Dean DeBeltz, “Our plan is backed by decades of exploration and analysis and is rooted in the most environmentally sophisticated design, which is tailored for our project location and mineral deposit. It deserves a fair evaluation by federal regulators based on its merits.”
Analysis
Congress acted wisely to end the Biden administration’s moratoria on mining in northeastern Minnesota, where 95% of the nation’s nickel reserves and 88% of American cobalt reserves are found, as well as copper and other critical minerals. Precluding mines in the United States simply shifts investment and jobs to foreign shores, placing those nations in the driver’s seat of the United States’ energy future. According to a 2025 report, America’s Mineral Reserves: Unlocking Our $12 Trillion Treasure Chest, by Unleash Prosperity, “To support and defend the world’s largest, technology-based, environmentally friendly, and free economy, we must redesign the existing domestic mining permitting and regulatory gauntlet in order to enable the free market to produce the critical minerals and metals that America needs now. Without reliable mineral supply chains, the nation can neither insulate itself from the impacts of global conflict nor protect its domestic interests.”
*This article was adapted from content originally published by the Institute for Energy Research.