Critical Minerals: BLM Should Ensure Individuals and Businesses Meet Citizenship Requirements for Hardrock Mining Claims

Critical minerals–like copper and lithium–are vital to the U.S. economy and national security. The U.S. relies on imported critical minerals to meet its needs, raising concerns that have prompted the President to call for expanding mining on federal lands.

To extract minerals from federal lands, individuals must generally be U.S. citizens and companies must be incorporated in the U.S. However, the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees mines on federal lands, rarely collects information to know if these requirements are being met.

We recommended that BLM do so to help ensure that only those qualified can extract minerals from federal lands.

Photo of a copper mine on federal lands.

The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) administers mining claims that grant the exclusive right to extract critical and other hardrock minerals from most federal lands. U.S. mining laws include citizenship requirements for individuals and business entities holding such claims, known as mining claimants. Under these laws, mining claimants generally must be U.S. citizens, which can include individuals as well as business entities incorporated in a U.S. state or territory. Foreign entities are not qualified to be claimants, but their subsidiaries can hold claims if they are incorporated in the U.S. Mining claimants are not required to disclose to BLM if they are a subsidiary of another entity, foreign or domestic, and they do not have to provide information on any foreign investment they may receive.