Developing a new mine in the United States takes an average of 29 years, the second-longest compared with the rest of the world, according to a report that the data analytics firm S&P Global Market Intelligence released Thursday.
Only Zambia takes longer — 34 years — to see new mines move from exploration to production, S&P concluded, and projects that do materialize in the U.S. often face more legal challenges and uncertainty compared with other countries.
“The development of a mine in the U.S. is not only long and costly, it is unusually uncertain,” authors of the report write. “While developing a mine in Canada or Australia can also take a long time, with respective average times of 27 and 20 years, those mines do reliably enter production. In the US, even if mines receive all required permits, they are subject to higher litigation risk.”
The National Mining Association paid for the study but did not provide data or substantive input, according to S&P.
