Utah has reduced royalty rates for two foreign companies who want to mine lithium and uranium from the state’s water and land.
The Board of Trustees for the Utah Trust Lands Administration unanimously moved to lessen what A1 Lithium, an Australian company, and IsoEnergy Ltd., a Canadian company, would have to pay to the state for mining on trust lands when the board met May 15. The administration leases and sells lands to generate money for Utah public schools.
“We need to be competitive to encourage exploration and production on trust lands, and a lower royalty rate on a project that actually goes into production is better than a higher royalty rate on a project that is not economic and won’t be developed,” said Stephanie Barber-Renteria, managing director of energy and minerals for the Trust Lands Administration.
Barber-Renteria added that the state agency’s staff “found that our current production royalty rates are significantly higher than those in other states. The board agreed that reducing the royalty rates would encourage exploration and development in Utah and accelerate the payment of royalties to our beneficiaries.”
A1 Lithium, a subsidiary of Australian mining company Anson Resources, is working to extract lithium from the Green River in Emery County. The state reduced the company’s royalty rate on 6,500 acres from 5% on the lithium they sell to a sliding scale that ranges from 1% and 5% based on the market price of lithium.
Anson Resources told Mining.com.au that Utah’s is the first scaled royalty structure for lithium in the U.S. Last year, A1 Lithium donated $10,000 to Utah Gov. Spencer Cox’s reelection campaign.
A1 Lithium did not respond to emails and phone calls requesting comment for this story.
IsoEnergy is close to reopening the Tony M uranium mine in Garfield County and plans to send the uranium ore mined there to the White Mesa Mill in Blanding for processing. Their royalty rate is now 3%, down from 8%, on 640 acres.
The Trust Lands Administration also cut royalties for Kinross Gold Corp., headquartered in Toronto. The company plans to mine on over 17,000 acres of trust land in Beaver County, and the state has reduced their royalties from 4% to 3%.
“It’s not surprising that [TLA] would be requiring that a company shares less of the benefits with Utahns for profiting off their mineral wealth,” said Kyle Roerink, executive director of the environmental nonprofit Great Basin Water Network. The group sued Utah last year over the state’s decision to grant water rights for Anson’s lithium drilling on the Green River.
“It’s standard practice in Utah to do whatever they can for industry first and foremost,” Roerink said.
Utah hopes to be a ‘business partner’ to lithium companies
Lithium is an essential element in the rechargeable batteries that power phones, computers, cameras and electric vehicles. But extracting it uses significant amounts of water.
Anson claims that its approach is different.
The company plans to drill thousands of feet underground to pull lithium-saturated brine — a salty, watery solution — up to the surface. Then, the company proposes using a nascent technique called direct lithium extraction using a material developed by Sunresin, a Chinese company.
Anson would rinse the lithium free from that material using water from both the Colorado and Green Rivers. The Wayne County Water Conservancy District approved that water right in January 2023, after Anson solidified an agreement with Green River Companies LLC. Anson paid just $1 to secure the water — 2,500 acre-feet per year — which they can use for 23 years.
Once all the lithium has been taken out, Anson says it would inject almost all the wastewater back underground for “non-consumptive” use of the water. But a group of farmers, Emery County residents and environmentalists said that using water from the drought-stricken Colorado River system for an unproven project opens a dangerous door.
“Because lithium hasn’t been produced in Utah, it’s not an industry with a set or known royalty rate,” said Andy Bedingfield, the Trust Lands Administration’s assistant managing director for energy and minerals, said during the board’s May 15 meeting.
“This is still a developing industry,” he continued. “It’s still in its infancy, so we’re still figuring some things out here.”
Bedingfield noted that the royalty rate for lithium extraction on federal land is 0%.
“We need to kind of compete with that, or be in range of that. Again, lithium is still an unproven commodity [and] direct lithium extraction is still being developed,” he said. “The proposed royalty structure will help … incentivize them, not just on this project, but on other projects in Utah. It’ll be a favorable royalty rate for us but also for industry to bring them to the state.”
Tiffany James, a Trust Lands Administration board member, praised the move to make royalty “structures more friendly for business.”
“I appreciate that you’re positioning trust lands to be a business partner and competitive in terms of royalty rates,” she said.
State wants to prove it’s friendly to uranium
Reducing royalties for the Tony M uranium mine, said board member Mike Nelson, sends a message “that we can mine and process uranium in Utah.”
“The expertise is there, the regulations that are required are there, and everybody involved in the permits knows how to deal with this,” Nelson continued. “That’s not the case in some of the other former uranium areas.”
IsoEnergy bought the mine from Energy Fuels Inc. in 2021. Energy Fuels owns uranium mines in Utah and Arizona, as well as the White Mesa Mill in Blanding.
Marty Tunney, IsoEnergy’s COO, said “the revised rate more accurately reflects typical hard rock royalties in the metalliferous mining industry — not just in Utah, but globally.”
“Utah continues to demonstrate, at all levels of government, why it consistently ranks at the top of the Fraser Institute’s annual mining rankings,“ Tunney continued. ”It’s a great place to do business, and I believe decisions like this will only attract more mining and exploration companies to the Industry State.”
Tyler Wiseman, a Trust Lands Administration geoscientist and lease manager for energy and minerals, said the companies have agreed the uranium ore from the Tony M mine will be processed at Energy Fuels’ mill. He added that the mine has already acquired necessary permits from the state.
“This is a near-term mine,” Wiseman said. “They have everything in place; they want to get to the next step.”
IsoEnergy last year acquired Anfield Energy Inc., a company that owns the Velvet-Wood uranium mine in southeastern Utah and is also working to reopen a uranium mill in the state. That arrangement was terminated earlier this year, a spokesperson for IsoEnergy said.
Correction: May 27, 2025, 2 p.m. • This story has been updated to clarify the relationship between IsoEnergy Ltd. and Anfield Energy Inc.
