INTERVIEW: EIA's Abbey discusses critical minerals initiative, supply chain transparency

The US Energy Information Administration has announced a new project to reduce data deficits in critical minerals markets, launching the Energy Minerals Observatory under recently confirmed Administrator Tristan Abbey.

The initiative will involve field studies of critical minerals vanadium, zirconium and graphite, for which markets are opaque and supply chains face data gaps.

The EIA's new project follows President Donald Trump's executive order to accelerate critical mineral production and boost domestic energy production of materials used in the national security and technology sectors. Recent Trump administration efforts seek to reduce reliance on countries like China for critical minerals.

The agency's initial phase of the project will involve an exploratory analysis to measure critical minerals consumption and production levels by gathering data from companies that produce or consume them. Abbey set a goal to complete the three field studies this spring.

Abbey recently spoke to Platts, part of S&P Global Energy. The following is an edited transcript of the conversation.

Platts: Why is critical minerals data collection a priority for you as administrator?

Tristan Abbey: For one thing, it's a priority for the administration. It's a priority for Congress and it's a personal priority. The critical minerals list that the US Geological Survey publishes is published because of an executive order that a much younger version of myself shepherded through the inter-agency process in 2017.

When I read about the critical minerals list, there's always a bit of a nostalgic reminder that this thing has been with us for a very long time. The problem is still there -- to the extent that a policy neutral person is allowed to say -- that for critical minerals, import dependence is a problem.

How do the new critical minerals studies interface with other federal agencies' efforts to establish domestic supply chains?

We launched the Energy Minerals Observatory. It is the banner name for our minerals initiative.

For many, many minerals, the markets are so small, so opaque, price discovery is a problem. Even things like who is producing what and at what cost. You can go down the list of minerals and many of them are going to have more questions than answers. It's just way more complicated than your than your grandparents' commodity.

What else will the agency do as part of the minerals initiative?

We have the ability to publish daily articles with the Today in Energy (TIE) series. You'll be seeing a number of TIE articles over the next several years on minerals. The three field surveys that we are developing now on vanadium, zirconium and graphite would ideally be the first three of many.

One of the advantages of doing a field study is that the field study is very flexible and you can stand them up very quickly. You are able to experiment and figure out if we ask a company how much of mineral X do they produce or consume, based on their answer, we can figure out whether or not the question worked.

Why start with vanadium, zirconium and graphite?

Everybody talks about lithium and cobalt and copper and nickel and rare earths. Very few people relatively talk about graphite, zirconium and vanadium. I thought it would be unchartered territory and would provide our analysts the opportunity to do something very, very interesting.

What do you see as potential challenges to gathering data?

I think the three minerals themselves illustrate different challenges.

There's natural graphite and there's synthetic graphite so already, just with the name of the commodity, there's this big question that emerges: How do you count the graphite?

With zirconium, it is not a mineral that we are 100% reliant on imports for, but it is used for nuclear cladding. Looking at the consumption of zirconium for nuclear-related equipment, is just by definition, a relatively small market. When you look at a small market, you have all these questions about opaque prices and supply chains that just come up naturally because the market is so small.

Vanadium is a byproduct, although it does exist naturally. My understanding is that its primary origin in the United States is a byproduct of other processes, including refining. You're dealing with an element that is extracted from other energy operations and then could be used for other energy operations, or more likely, for making steel alloys.

EIA has seen staff departures this year. Do you have staffing concerns when it comes to supporting this initiative?

No, I think EIA is very well resourced. I've been impressed by the talent and dedication and work product of our staff over the past couple months that I've been the administrator, and for many years prior to this, I was also an admirer of the work that EIA did. I've seen no decline in the quality of their product, period.

How will critical mineral data collection help markets when it comes to pricing and forecasting?

Right now, many mineral markets are near or totally opaque to most people. One of the great roles that the EIA plays in other energy markets like oil and gas and electricity is by allowing for transparency for price, for trade flows, for movements, stocks and volumes. I think in the future, the more visibility that we have into critical mineral-related supply chains, the less chance of a volatile situation developing there will be.

How could this data help inform policy-related decisions?

EIA is a policy neutral organization and we protect our independent analysis rigorously. However, being analytically independent does not mean that you are totally irrelevant to policy makers. I think one of the things over the past decade or so is that EIA has steadily grown more insular and therefore more and more irrelevant to policy makers.

One of the great things about these new field surveys is that it will allow us to better inform policymakers and to equip them with data to answer any kind of question they have on minerals, regardless of where they may stand politically,

You said during your Senate testimony that EIA is in need of a revitalization. How will these critical mineral studies support that?

I think it will contribute to the revitalization in several ways. One way is by sending a signal that EIA is nimble, that we are able to stand up new surveys very quickly and do interesting work.

The second way is by reversing some defeatism that I've detected in some conversations around the building. People will say, "We can't do X, Y, Z, because somebody tried that ten years ago and it didn't work." Or, "We could try that, but it takes so long to get anything through procurement. What's the point?"

I think EIA is very well resourced. I think that it is less a question of why we can't do something, and more of a question of what can we do with the very talented and well-resourced staff that we have. I think the answer is we haven't even scratched the surface with these three field surveys of what we are capable of doing.