"Our Stockpiles Were Worth $50 Billion… Today, They’re Worth $800 Million" Featuring Ashley Zumwalt-Forbes, Fmr U.S. DOE

Today we were thrilled to welcome our good friend Ashley Zumwalt-Forbes, former Deputy Director for Batteries and Critical Materials at the U.S. Department of Energy, to our offices in Houston. Ashley brings more than a decade of experience in acquiring, financing, and developing greenfield and brownfield mining projects, with deep expertise across the global mining supply chain. She served in the Biden Administration from January 2024 to January 2025, overseeing deployment of capital and tax incentives into the U.S. battery supply chain. Prior to her government service, Ashley was Co-Founder and President of Black Mountain Metals and Black Mountain Exploration. We were delighted to host Ashley for a timely and insightful conversation on the state of the global metals and minerals landscape.
 
In our discussion, we explore the bipartisan consensus on reducing U.S. dependence on foreign-sourced metals and minerals, particularly from China. Ashley shares her experience at the DOE and her goal to buy down demand risk to attract private capital, especially for large-scale processing infrastructure. We discuss the surge of investment and momentum in lithium brine projects in the U.S. along with efforts to accelerate domestic mining, including the Trump Administration’s move to expedite permits for 20 projects. Ashley outlines the tension between the desire to onshore more production and the current lack of downstream markets outside China, which remains a bottleneck for full supply chain development in the U.S. She shares innovative developments in processing methods, including China’s nickel conversion efforts in Indonesia, the potential for copper to be codified as a critical mineral in upcoming legislation, and why permitting reform and seabed mining are bandaids for the larger challenge of unit economics in the U.S. Ashley further explains the difficulty in making margins at each U.S. supply chain stage, especially when compared to China’s vertically integrated structure and non-profit-driven strategy, the benefits of targeted tariffs to protect nascent U.S. industries, and the lack of U.S. processing as the true choke point. She highlights the decline of U.S. stockpiles from Cold War levels to today, how the materials once stockpiled fueled the Allied victory in WWII, the depleted reserves in the U.S. today, the complexities involved in the U.S. minerals agreement with Ukraine, challenges in raising capital for mining projects, and the limited investor base. We also examine how structured government support will be essential for the U.S. to be competitive, Ashley’s next steps in her pursuit of sourcing and supporting “weird and wonderful” mining transactions, and more. As you will hear, Ashley offers a unique mix of policy insight, deep market understanding, and a genuine passion for rebuilding the U.S. industrial base. We’re thankful for her time and insights.
 
Mike Bradley opened the discussion by noting that broader markets were down marginally for the day and that “Trumpatility” appears to be temporarily subsiding. He highlighted a handful of notable developments in energy markets over the past week, first being OPEC+ agreeing to another ~400kbpd increase in June oil production in addition to the ~400kbpd production increase in May, both of which are being done into an oversupplied global oil market. Saudi seems to be the main driver of the OPEC+ increases and offered several reasons for their actions at this juncture. The second development relates to a big change in E&P mindset that’s occurred over the last couple of weeks at these lower oil price levels (high $50s/low $60s). A handful of E&Ps recently announced cuts to their 2025 capital programs (CTRA, EOG & FANG) and others are fully expected to announce cuts this week and next. The final development was Diamondback Energy’s recent Letter to Stockholders (linked