The U.S. Needs More Public Mineral Exploration

Government-led mineral exploration can expedite domestic mine construction

By Peter Cook

This is an abridged version of a recent whitepaper published by the Breakthrough Institute. You can find the original version here.

Policies that lower barriers to constructing domestic mines serve a vital role in securing critical mineral supply chains. Yet, U.S. policymakers have chiefly prioritized reducing lead times at the permitting stage, overlooking opportunities targeting the exploration stage by accelerating mapping campaigns that can take years and cost millions without certainty that the effort will yield a workable deposit. Policy discussions regularly cite permitting timelines as spanning upwards of 10 years, forgetting that just discovering a deposit can often take just as long.

Public exploration programs play a crucial role in reducing lead times for new mineral production. Yet, few voices are currently calling to maintain funding for the U.S. Geological Survey’s Earth Mapping Resource Initiative. This program constitutes the only concerted federal involvement in domestic critical mineral exploration, and the majority of its funding will expire in 2026. Failure to extend the program’s budget would be a strategic policy error.

The U.S. must recognize that an effective critical mineral strategy actually aids mine construction at both the exploration and permitting stages in a complementary manner and maintain support for public exploration programs. Reducing federal involvement in mineral exploration risks perpetuating long project lead times, decreasing the number of successful critical mineral mines, and misdirecting valuable private sector investment overseas.

The role of federal involvement in mineral exploration

Mining requires locating mineral deposits and characterizing them sufficiently to determine if companies could dig up the deposit at a profit. Searches for deposits typically start with broad techniques like airborne surveys and progress to more targeted approaches that map field observations at specific sites. While remote sensing and surface observations may help discover a potential deposit, more detailed subsequent assessments ultimately determine if the deposit would be economic to extract and inform the design of the actual mine—a process requiring underground data that only subsurface drilling can provide.

Public programs facilitate mine construction by taking on some of these duties and assuming part of the lead time, cost, and risk. State and federal geological surveys can perform or contract key early tasks of mineral exploration like airborne surveys that provide a large amount of preliminary data. Using that data, the private sector can then focus resources at more downstream stages like core drilling. Public exploration programs can thus reduce project lead times and encourage private sector investment. Surveys of U.S. stakeholders suggest that access to publicly available geologic information can reduce project lead time by 20%, reduce costs by 15%, and help companies navigate regulatory compliance.

Public funding for mineral exploration is an investment—not a cost

Fiscal conservatives may protest that publicly funded mineral exploration programs take on expenditures that the private sector would otherwise incur. However, studies from other countries with robust mining sectors like Australia, Canada, Chile, and China confirm that public spending on mineral exploration generates a consistent return on expenditures.

One Australian campaign spent ~$35 million over 9 years and returned 16 new deposits, with another Australian program estimating $31 in revenue for every $1 spent. Policymakers, however, have allowed funding for U.S. geological surveys to generally decline in past decades despite industry noting that the increasingly outdated U.S. geodatabase deters investment.

In reality, constructing mines ultimately requires competing with other countries to attract investment from mining companies that have the option to pursue any number of deposits across the world. The U.S. has lagged in this respect in recent decades as the mining industry has globalized. The number of domestic mines has decreased by half over the past 40 years and the U.S. now commands only 11% of global exploration spending compared to 20% in 1993. All the while, new foreign markets continue to emerge as competitors, endowed with previously obscure critical minerals that have become essential in recent years.

Mineral data collection is an ongoing national need

Geologic maps continually require updates to maintain their usefulness. A sound U.S. critical minerals strategy must, therefore, engage in mineral exploration as a consistent practice rather than as occasional, temporary campaigns.

Technological improvements in collection techniques continually improve data quality such that using older data risks a less productive industry relative to global competitors. Modern airborne surveys, for example, dramatically surpass the spatial precision of older techniques by accounting for interferences from atmospheric radon and following computer guided flight paths. Meanwhile, combinations of 3D seismic sensors and muon tomography (a remote sensing technique that probes the underground using cosmic radiation) can detect deeper into the earth than before—an increasingly necessary tool as industry depletes shallow deposits. Add to this the eventual depletion of the deposits already in production and it becomes clear that countries must continually explore to maintain mineral production.

Policymakers must consistently maintain funding for exploration programs since periods of inactivity only creates a backlog of work as it has in the past. As recently as 2019, modern geophysical data necessary to detect even the most preliminary geologic characteristics like fault structures covered only 7% of U.S. land area. Keep in mind that this backlog represents only one type of geologic data alongside LIDAR scans for modern topography, geochemical identification, and basic boots-on-the-ground outcrop mapping. Arguably, policymakers have approached exploration primarily on an as-needed basis while failing to recognize costs as a valuable investment in the future of the U.S. economy.

Public exploration programs help align private industry with U.S. strategic interests

Mining companies will invest in mineral exploration regardless of government involvement. However, private sector incentives do not always align with national strategic interests. Low commodity prices, for example, often cause the private sector to pull back exploration spending despite continued import reliance for many critical minerals and future projections of increased demand. Public exploration initiatives thus supplement existing private sector efforts while operating independently of the business considerations that compel industry decisions. The gaps that state and federal geological surveys fill can stimulate additional industry activity and direct efforts to more strategically valuable ventures.

Most importantly, public exploration programs can specifically target critical minerals to secure strategic supply chains. The U.S. Geological Survey’s Earth Mapping Resource Initiative, for example, identified a potential rare earth element deposit in Maine. Such discoveries, should industry determine them economical for production, could alleviate U.S. supply chain risks that currently depend solely upon the nation’s only source of rare earth oxides, the Mountain Pass mine in California.

The private sector may hesitate to explore for various critical minerals since they often constitute niche commodities that relatively few firms possess expertise in. Industry already tends to cluster in regions with proven mineral potential to make use of institutional knowledge and manage risk. Public exploration programs by contrast can venture into riskier greenfields and new resource types like seafloor minerals—even during market downturns that would shutter private sector investment. Such efforts in turn build operational and technical knowledge applicable to private industry, helping reduce costs and speed future exploration.

Publicly funded mapping campaigns can also make geologic data publicly available. This allows multiple developers to pursue promising results at once, focuses industry efforts towards more likely prospects, and facilitates the entry of more junior companies. Beyond accessibility, standardized data formats like the GeMS standard used by the U.S. Geological Survey make geologic information more useful to industry by ensuring consistency in basic terminology, spatial scales, and compatibility with geographic information systems (GIS). This is not to mention the literally billions of dollars’ worth of analog data and old drill cores sitting in state and federal survey sheds waiting for digitization and incorporation into existing databases.

Now is the time for the U.S. to act on critical mineral exploration

In a potential break from historical ebbs and flows, policy proposals are increasingly accepting funding for mapping programs as a continuing national need. The Trump administration’s 2025 Executive Order Unleashing American Energy emphasized exploration as part of its strategy toward natural resource development. Meanwhile, the bipartisan Finding ORE Act empowers the Department of the Interior to enter into arrangements with foreign countries to leverage U.S. exploration expertise in exchange for first right of refusal to develop critical mineral mines.

While it is not likely that better data on the geology of the United States can solve every single one of the nation’s critical mineral constraints, a wider catalog of subsurface information increases the chances of discovering economically-competitive projects that could significantly alleviate import reliance for specific minerals. Policymakers must renew support for domestic mineral exploration alongside their broader efforts to reduce barriers to mine development. Failure to adequately support critical mineral exploration activities discourages investment in domestic prospects, putting the U.S. at a further strategic disadvantage compared to global mining competitors like China and delaying progress towards secure critical mineral supply chains. Given the long lead time required to develop newly-discovered deposits into real mine production—and the potential for survey data to shave down such lead times—now is precisely the best moment to make sure we understand the full extent of the opportunities under our feet.

The author thanks the staff members of the various state geological surveys who gave essential insights on this topic.