The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Monday heard presentations from the Energy and Environmental Research Center and the University of North Dakota on prospects for extracting rare earth and other critical minerals from lignite and then voted, 7-0, to advance an amended version of House Bill 1459 for further consideration.

The presentations and the bill debate focused on the technical potential identified to date, costs and scale for a first commercial concentrating plant, the advantages of extracting minerals from coal before combustion, and unresolved legal questions about ownership of minerals recovered from coal seams.

Tyler Hammond of the Energy and Environmental Research Center said the ERC participated in the U.S. Department of Energy's CoreCM initiative and that phase 1 work in basins including the Williston Basin identified coal intervals with rare-earth concentrations at or above a DOE threshold of about 300 parts per million. "For the record, my name is Tyler Hammond on behalf of the Energy and Environmental Research Center," he told the committee. He said ERC has collected more than 100 samples from potential feedstocks (produced water, clays, fly ash and coal samples, including material from the MHA Nation) and that phase 2 will expand the regional resource assessment and examine permitting and infrastructure challenges.

Dan Lodol, a researcher at UND's College of Engineering and Mines, described a pilot effort in Grand Forks and the pathway to a demonstration commercial concentrator. "My name is Dan Lodol. I'm a researcher at the College of Engineering and Mines at UND," he said. Lodol said the first commercial concentrating plant under consideration would likely be on the order of 100,000'to'10,000,000 200,000 tons of lignite feed per year (he and ERC used a 200,000-ton-per-year scale in their estimates), with capital cost roughly $100 million to build a concentrator that would produce a roughly 90 percent mixture of the 17 rare-earth elements for sale to a refiner. He said concentrate shipments would be compact (roughly a truckload per week at commercial scale) and that the long-term industry could take 10 or more years to build out into a multi-billion-dollar value chain if the initial projects de-risk successfully.

Both presenters emphasized that extracting minerals pre-combustion has chemical and cost advantages over recovering them from combustion ash. Lodol said pre-combustion processing can avoid the heavy chemical digestion required to treat glassy fly ash and that ash-based processing may also dilute or miss concentrations that exist only in the seam margins. He also noted that upgraded lignite from the concentrating process could retain value as a combustion fuel or as a feedstock for other products (for example, synthetic graphite or graphene under separate UND research). Committee members asked about product volumes, revenue sharing arrangements with refiners, timeline to commercialize, and whether recovered coal would remain usable; presenters said the technology is ready to move from pilot to demonstration but that business, legal and site-selection work remain.

The committee also spent significant time on statutory and ownership questions tied to House Bill 1459, an omnibus amendment that was drafted with input from the Attorney General's office, the Department of Mineral Resources and Trust Lands, the North Dakota Geological Survey and the governor's office. Committee leaders described three principal components in the proposed amendment: public policy language supporting development, study language directing additional analysis, and clarifying language addressing whether recovered critical minerals should be treated as part of the mineral estate (or coal estate) or in some other ownership category. Committee members repeatedly raised the need to clarify ownership language so it does not unintentionally reassign surface or mineral rights; the chair said the amendment seeks to protect the state's interest while leaving room for further drafting in conference.

After discussion the committee adopted the proposed amendment to House Bill 1459 by voice vote and recorded tally (7 ayes, 0 nays). The committee then voted to give the amended bill a do-pass recommendation, 7-0. Committee members said the likely next steps are to send the amended bill to the House, ask the House Energy Committee not to concur to allow additional drafting time, and to use the study language to address jurisdictional and regulatory questions before final enactment. The chair said the legislative intent is to complete work by about April 30, but acknowledged the schedule is tight and additional weeks for refinement may be needed.

Committee members also discussed the Department of Energy funding timeline: presenters said a DOE phase-2 application tied to a larger project was not pursued because required scale and cost-share terms made the proposed DOE structure uneconomic for the initial project; DOE funding may be available in future solicitations if project scale and cost sharing can be matched.

The hearing included questions from multiple senators about pre-combustion vs. post-combustion recovery, the effect of weathering or stockpiling on feedstock chemistry, the potential impacts on coal mining plans and power plant operations, and the possible need to coordinate concentrate sites and centralized refining. Presenters cautioned that recovered materials may change chemically if stockpiled and that the most promising occurrences are often in thinner margins of seams that may require selective handling rather than bulk mining. The presenters and committee agreed additional technical study and legal drafting are required before major commercial commitments.

The committee did not authorize any final leases or projects; it approved the amended House Bill 1459 for further legislative processing and asked staff and stakeholders to continue refining ownership and study language so the state can pursue federal grants and private investment without creating unintended legal conflicts.