The Battery Supply Chain Series documented three categories of critical mineral feedstock embedded in American waste streams: acid mine drainage in the Appalachian coal basin, lithium-bearing produced water in the Permian and Bakken, and mineral-laden tailings at legacy hardrock mine sites across the American West. The argument was that these materials, developed by American entities on an American timeline, represented the foundation of a domestic battery supply chain that did not require a single new mine.
This piece asks a different question. If those feedstocks represent a strategic resource — and the Battery Supply Chain Series established that they do — then who else knows that? And what is the American regulatory environment's current capacity to prevent a foreign-backed entity from acquiring access to them?
The answer to the first question is: anyone who has read a Department of Energy report since 2016. The answer to the second question is the purpose of this article.
Series Context — Part 2 The Precedent: Indonesia, Zambia, Australia — three documented cases of the acquisition pattern this series is tracingThree Zones of Exposure
The Battery Supply Chain Series was organized around chemistry and supply chain logic. This series is organized around vulnerability. The three zones below are not the only sites that matter — they are the sites that combine high mineral value, near-term commercial accessibility, and the thinnest regulatory protection against foreign beneficial ownership operating through opaque structures.
Acid mine drainage is not a static deposit. It is a continuous flux. Long after mining ends, sulfur-bearing rock continues to weather and generate sulfuric acid that leaches metals from surrounding geology. In the Northern and Central Appalachian Coal Basin — West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland — this process has been running for decades and produces a steady stream of water enriched in rare earth elements, cobalt, and manganese. WVU researchers surveying 140 AMD treatment sites across the four-state region found potential production of up to 2,200 tons of rare earth elements per year. In terms of composition, AMD from this basin runs approximately 45 percent heavy rare earth elements — the neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, and terbium that are most critical to EV motor magnets and defense applications. China produces more than 80 percent of the world's supply of these specific materials.
The extraction chemistry is not speculative. WVU's Water Research Institute holds exclusively patented processes for recovering REE concentrates from AMD, has operated a pilot plant near Mount Storm, Grant County, West Virginia treating 800 gallons per minute of drainage, and received $8 million in DOE funding in 2023 for a pre-commercial demonstration facility. West Virginia's legislature passed a bill clarifying who owns the proceeds from AMD-derived critical minerals. The Appalachian AMD supply chain is becoming real in real time.
The regulatory structure for the AMD treatment business is a Clean Water Act compliance framework. Companies win contracts to operate AMD treatment systems at mine sites and demonstrate regulatory compliance through discharge water meeting applicable standards. The mineral content of the resulting concentrate is not a primary regulatory concern. There is no mechanism in the Clean Water Act, CERCLA, or EPA's Superfund program that screens AMD treatment contractors for foreign beneficial ownership. A Chinese-backed environmental services company incorporated in Delaware, with beneficial ownership running through a Cayman Islands holding structure, could win an AMD treatment contract at a West Virginia mine site tomorrow. CFIUS would not see it. FEOC would not see it. The Corporate Transparency Act, which would have required disclosure of that beneficial ownership, had its enforcement suspended in January 2025.
Pennsylvania's Marcellus shale produced water contains the highest lithium concentrations among major American shale plays — approximately 84 ppm, six times the Permian grade. The same Appalachian basin's AMD simultaneously produces cobalt and manganese in concentrations that matter at national scale. Pennsylvania once led the nation in cobalt production. WVU researchers estimate that AMD treatment sludge across the basin contains cobalt equivalent to the entirety of U.S. primary cobalt reserves.
Richard Mine / Deckers Creek — Monongalia/Preston Counties WV · AMD treatment active, REE pilot recovery
Berkeley Pit — Butte, MT · Large-format AMD discharge · est. 50 tpy total REE oxides + 18 tpy cobalt
Fola Mine — Clay County WV · part of WVU/NETL treatment network
Bismarck Site — Grant County WV · WVU Water Research Institute operations
Approximately 140 additional sites across WV, PA, OH, MD — NETL survey coverage
The Permian Basin produces approximately 20 million barrels of produced water per day. Lithium concentrations in Permian brines average around 14 ppm — lower grade than other basins, but volume compensates. Enverus estimated the Delaware Basin alone could support up to 225,000 tons of lithium carbonate per year. The Bakken in North Dakota produces up to 2 million barrels per day at lithium concentrations reaching 90 ppm — nearly three times the Permian grade, with potential production of up to 50,000 tons of LCE annually. The Marcellus averages 84 ppm lithium — the highest of any major American shale play.
Element3, a Fort Worth-based company, deployed its first commercial-scale DLE extraction plant in the Midland Basin in Q1 2026, in partnership with Double Eagle Energy Holdings. Volt Lithium achieved North America's largest operational DLE system at over 10,000 barrels per day in the Permian by February 2025, with a Bakken unit following in mid-2025. The sector is transitioning from demonstration to commercial operation.
The ownership structure of this market is entirely private. A produced water treatment agreement is a contract between an oil and gas operator and a services company. The Texas Supreme Court ruled in June 2025 that produced water belongs to the hydrocarbon lessee. The operator controls the waste stream, selects the treatment vendor, and negotiates the offtake. There is no federal procurement process. There is no CFIUS trigger — these are service contracts, not business acquisitions. There is no FEOC screening — FEOC applies downstream, at the battery cell manufacturing stage, not at the lithium extraction stage.
A Chinese-backed DLE company incorporated in an allied jurisdiction could enter the produced water treatment market as a services vendor, negotiate extraction agreements with Permian operators, extract lithium chloride or carbonate from the produced water, and route the output to Indian battery precursor manufacturers with complete legal impunity under the current framework. The oil operator collects a disposal fee or revenue share. FEOC never sees it because the transaction is upstream of the battery cell supply chain that FEOC monitors.
Volt Lithium Gen 5 — Permian Basin TX · 10,000+ bpd operational Feb. 2025 · Bakken ND unit mid-2025
ExxonMobil / Equinor / Chevron — Smackover Formation, East TX and AR · High Li concentrations · commercial-scale investment underway
Multiple pre-commercial operators in Marcellus (PA), Bakken (ND), Permian (NM) — not all publicly disclosed
The Good Samaritan Remediation of Abandoned Hardrock Mines Act was signed into law December 17, 2024. It is genuinely well-intentioned. The U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, and EPA have identified approximately 140,000 abandoned hardrock mines across the country, with an estimated 22,500 environmentally hazardous. The Act establishes a seven-year pilot program allowing EPA to issue up to 15 permits to entities that had no prior involvement with a site — enabling remediation without incurring liability for pre-existing contamination.
The Act requires permit applicants to provide a list of all parties involved, including all members of any corporation, association, partnership, consortium, joint venture, or commercial entity. It requires demonstration of financial capacity and environmental expertise. It does not require CFIUS review. It does not require FEOC eligibility screening. It does not require beneficial ownership disclosure beyond what the applicant chooses to list — because the Corporate Transparency Act enforcement that would have independently verified that beneficial ownership was suspended in January 2025, seventeen days after the Good Samaritan Act was signed.
Abandoned hardrock mines contain cobalt, nickel, copper, rare earth elements, lithium, and manganese in their tailings and waste rock. The same chemistry that makes these sites environmental liabilities concentrates those minerals in treatment streams accessible to modern extraction technology. The Act explicitly allows permit holders to reprocess materials recovered during remediation if proceeds defray cleanup costs. The line between remediation and extraction, in a facility treating acid drainage enriched in neodymium and cobalt, is operationally very thin.
The pilot issues only 15 permits. That is not a reassurance. The Yuxiao Fund tried to acquire less than 20 percent of a single rare earths company in Australia, and it required two years of regulatory process and Federal Court proceedings to unwind. Fifteen Good Samaritan permits, placed strategically at sites with high critical mineral content, represent a more durable and harder-to-reverse position than any single equity stake. A remediation contract runs for years. The beneficial ownership of the contractor is not publicly disclosed. The critical mineral output flows wherever the contractor routes it.
Bunker Hill Mining Complex, Coeur d'Alene ID — silver, cobalt, zinc · major NPL site
Berkeley Pit, Butte MT — copper, cobalt, REE · 50 tpy REO potential (also AMD Zone 1)
Iron Mountain Mine, Redding CA — copper, zinc, cobalt, cadmium in drainage
Hundreds of additional sites across AZ, CO, NV, NM, WY with copper, cobalt, and REE mineral content in tailings
The Regulatory Gap Map
The three zones above share a structural characteristic: none of them are defended by the regulatory instruments American policymakers believe are protecting the critical minerals supply chain. CFIUS, FEOC, and the Corporate Transparency Act are each powerful tools — within their defined jurisdictions. The problem is that the three zones of exposure exist in the spaces between those jurisdictions.
The Seventeen-Day Window
The regulatory gap above has existed, in partial form, for years. What makes the current moment acute is a confluence of two legislative events that occurred in rapid succession at the turn of 2025.
The conjunction is not conspiratorial. The Good Samaritan Act passed the Senate unanimously. The CTA enforcement suspension resulted from genuine legal challenges to the statute's constitutionality. Neither event was designed to create a vulnerability. The point is not malice. The point is that strategic actors identify and exploit conjunctions regardless of whether the conjunction was designed.
The Australian Northern Minerals case moved to acquire additional shares in a rare earths company immediately after a previous acquisition attempt was blocked. It did not wait. It found a new structure — Singapore, BVI, UAE — and tried again. A Good Samaritan permit application filed in 2025 or 2026 by a Delaware LLC whose beneficial ownership runs through an offshore holding structure is, at this moment, substantially harder to scrutinize than the same application would have been in 2023.
The Question No One Is Asking
The Superfund program received $537 million in base appropriations in fiscal year 2024, down from $2.6 billion in 1999. EPA is chronically underfunded, understaffed, and managing a backlog of 1,340 active NPL sites. The Good Samaritan Act was celebrated by environmental groups, mining industry advocates, conservation organizations, and bipartisan members of Congress because it addresses a real problem with limited federal resources and genuine environmental urgency. Trout Unlimited called it "a victory for common sense." It is.
None of those advocates were asking who would be filing the Good Samaritan permit applications.
The AMD treatment business in Appalachia is populated today by university research partnerships, state agencies, conservation groups, and a small number of specialized environmental services firms. That is not who will be attracted to the sector when it becomes commercially significant. When WVU's pre-commercial demonstration facility proves that AMD-derived REE concentrates can be produced at industrial scale — and it will — the AMD treatment business will attract capital in quantities that state agencies and nonprofits cannot match. That capital will come from somewhere. The question is whether the regulatory environment will be capable of determining where.
WVU's Ziemkiewicz put the commercial logic plainly: "You don't have to dig a hole in the ground, you don't have to wait nine years to get a mining permit, and you don't have to spend $6 million or more to get the exploration done." He meant it as an argument for the efficiency of AMD-derived critical minerals. It is also, inadvertently, a precise description of why AMD treatment contracts are strategically attractive to an actor seeking low-friction, low-visibility access to a critical mineral feedstock in an economically distressed region with limited political visibility and no applicable federal security screening.
Indonesia didn't need a new mine. It needed an industrial park and a host government willing to ban ore exports. Zambia's acquirer didn't need a mine — it acquired existing operations at crisis pricing and accumulated debt leverage that made enforcement politically impossible. Australia's adversary needed no mine at all. It needed a 20 percent equity stake in a small-cap developer, structured through three offshore jurisdictions.
The Appalachian AMD basin doesn't need a mine. It needs an AMD treatment contract and an off-site refinery. One of those is available right now, under a new federal pilot program with no national security screening, at a moment when the primary beneficial ownership tracing tool is suspended.
Part 4 of this series — The Enforcement Gap — will examine what specific legislative fixes would close these exposures, assess their political feasibility under the current administration, and address whether CFIUS jurisdiction can be extended to service contracts without creating a regulatory burden that kills the Good Samaritan program it is designed to protect.