Weekly Geopolitical Mining Review
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Geopolitical Mining Weekly | Week of February 23 – March 1, 2026
This week’s note tracks how critical minerals are moving from strategy language into rules, enforcement, and supply discipline: USTR’s push toward a plurilateral critical minerals deal, rising USMCA review uncertainty, Zimbabwe’s export ban and its immediate lithium price signal in China, a new Indonesia-Gabon rare earth axis, and Argentina’s glacier law reform debate as a…
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Geopolitical Mining Weekly | Week of 16–22 February 2026
This week’s Geopolitical Mining Weekly tracks how new US/Mexico/Canada links, US–Philippines and US–Argentina deals, an India–Brazil critical minerals pact, China’s rare earths price power and Canada’s use of public capital and fast track schemes are reshaping who controls critical minerals – not just in the ground, but in the rules, prices and institutions around them.
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Geopolitical Mining Weekly|Week of 9 – 15 February 2026
This week’s Geopolitical Mining Weekly connects Indonesia’s new state led rare earths strategy, Codelco’s governance response at El Teniente, the Concordia tragedy in Mexico, Verisk Maplecroft’s view of South America as the West’s “safest bet” for critical minerals, and a debate on whether NI 43-101 is still sufficient, to show how system design, governance and…
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Geopolitical Mining Weekly | Week of 2-8 February 2026
This week, Project Vault, the UK-US critical minerals MoU, Japan’s Minamitorishima test, Codelco-Quiborax’s Minera Ascotán, the Orion CMC-Glencore MoU and Washington’s 2026 Critical Minerals Ministerial all point in the same direction: the early contours of an economic -industrial base in critical minerals increasingly aligned with Western economies. For boards and investors, the question is no…
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Geopolitical Mining Weekly | Week of 26 January – 1 February 2026
This week’s Geopolitical Mining Weekly looks at five signals, Indigenous shared decision making in British Columbia, a deadly coltan mine collapse in DRC, India’s push into lithium and nickel processing, Brazil’s emerging critical minerals policy and a violent price correction in metals, to show how the era of substance in mining is being defined at…
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Geopolitical Mining Weekly | Week of 19–25 January 2026
This week’s Geopolitical Mining Weekly looks at how Davos 2026, new U.S. rules for deep sea mining, Bolivia’s legal reset, Mali’s centralisation of its gold sector and Canada’s infrastructure bank for critical minerals all point in the same direction: mining is now where the real test of the era of substance will be played out,…
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Geopolitical Mining Weekly | Week of 12 – 18 January 2026
Geopolitical Mining Weekly examines how five moves, the U.S. Section 232 action on processed critical minerals, the Future Minerals Forum in Riyadh, the EU – Mercosur agreement, Tesla’s Texas lithium refinery and Ontario’s fast tracked Crawford nickel project, are shifting power from ore in the ground to who controls midstream capacity, trade corridors and the…
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Geopolitical Mining Weekly | Week of 5 – 11 January 2026
This week’s five signals show a shared shift, critical minerals risk is no longer driven mainly by geology or spot prices, but by who controls the financial and regulatory toolkit, and how energy and scale reshape bargaining power. Washington brings critical minerals to the finance minister level (G7+), Rio – Glencore tests the consolidation thesis…
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Geopolitical Mining Weekly | Week of 29 December 2025 – 4 January 2026
This week’s signals – a US$28.9bn licence arbitration in Guinea, Zambia opening mining tax payments to the yuan, first anodes from the Kamoa–Kakula smelter in the DRC, a strike at Chile’s Mantoverde mine and the capture of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela – all point in the same direction: critical minerals and energy are now governed…
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Geopolitical Mining Weekly | Week of 22–28 December 2025
States are tightening control over who can mine, process and export critical minerals, from the DRC’s suspension of artisanal cobalt, to China’s crackdown on illegal mining, Chile’s Codelco–SQM lithium venture in Atacama and copper ending the year near record highs, signalling that future supply will be shaped as much by governance and state-led structures as…