LONDON, March 26 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald

Trump's executive order on boosting domestic minerals production

is intended to blast a path through the thicket of mine

permitting in the United States.

It takes an average of nearly 29 years for a new mine to go

from discovery to production in the United States, the

second-longest lead time in the world after Zambia, according to

S&P Global.

Permitting on Federal Land in particular is a big problem

and one that the U.S. government is uniquely qualified to solve.

The Joe Biden administration struggled to reconcile its

ambition to produce more "green" metals for the energy

transition with its environmental and social credentials.

Trump has no such qualms.

The Secretary of the Interior is instructed to "prioritize

mineral production activities over other types of activities on

Federal lands".

But there is a danger that the political pendulum will swing

too far the other way. There is also the problem that new mines

still take many years to build and the U.S. lacks the processing

capacity to convert raw materials to metal.

Copper is a case in point.

STALLED COPPER PROJECTS

Copper is not on the U.S. critical minerals list but gets a

special mention in Trump's executive order, along with gold,

uranium, potash and, if the chair of the National Energy

Dominance Council so determines, any other element "such as

coal".

Copper has come to epitomise the problem of getting new

mines up and running in the United States.

Big copper projects such as Resolution in Arizona, Pebble in

Alaska and Twin Metals in Minnesota have been stalled for years

at the federal permitting stage.

All three could benefit from the change of political wind in

Washington.

But opposition from Native Americans and environmental

protection groups is not going to magically disappear at the

stroke of a presidential pen. Indeed, it might well become more

entrenched.

Big mining companies such as Rio Tinto, which owns a

majority stake in Resolution, have learnt the hard way that

mining without community consent is highly problematic.

The company has buy-in from both Serbian and European Union

policy-makers for its giant Jadar lithium mine but progress has

ground to a halt due to mass protests.

EXTENDED TIME-LINE

The Resolution mine has the potential to become the biggest

copper producer in North America, capable of meeting up to 25%

of the United States' annual copper demand.

The copper will come with by-products such as bismuth,

indium and tellurium, all of which are on the critical minerals

list.

But even assuming accelerated permitting, the mine will

still take around 10 years to construct, meaning the first

copper concentrates would be produced only around the middle of

the next decade.

Resolution is located in Arizona, which has a long history

of mining and associated infrastructure.

The Pebble and Twin Metals projects face extra challenges in

the form of physical remoteness and potential impact on salmon

spawning grounds and the Boundary Waters Wilderness

respectively.

Fast-tracking permitting for such projects doesn't mean

they'll be ready to generate copper any time soon.

PROCESSING GAP

Rio's Resolution mine could be integrated into the company's

existing Kennecott smelting and refining operations in Utah.

Kennecott, however, is only one of two active primary copper

smelters in the United States. The other one is Miami in Arizona

operated by Freeport-McMoRan ( FCX ). There has been speculation

but so far no confirmation that Grupo Mexico might re-open its

Hayden smelter in the same state.

The United States is already a net exporter of copper

concentrates for want of sufficient processing capacity. Some

320,000 tons of contained metal in concentrates were shipped

overseas last year, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The three main destinations were Mexico, China and Canada.

Clearly there is enough North American smelting capacity to

absorb extra U.S. mine production but the Biden administration's

policy of "friend-shoring" has been replaced with Trump's tariff

threats against the United States' two neighbours.

Moreover, every copper smelter is currently competing with

China, where smelting and refining capacity is huge and still

growing.

Smelter margins are being squeezed in the form of

historically low treatment charges for converting raw material

into metal at historic lows.

Building sufficient domestic capacity to process extra U.S.

mine production could be a thornier problem than building the

new mines in the first place.

URBAN SOLUTION

The fixation on headline-grabbing mega mine projects to

reduce U.S. import dependency misses a far easier and lower-cost

solution.

U.S. processing capacity for recycling copper is growing.

Germany's Aurubis AG has invested $800 million in

a new smelter in Georgia for treating up to 180,000 metric tons

of complex recyclables such as circuit-boards.

The United States is the world's largest exporter of copper

scrap to the tune of almost a million tons each year. Much of it

is sent to China for processing.

Recycling all that lost metal at domestic facilities

wouldn't eliminate U.S. copper import dependency but it would

significantly close the gap.

Recycling comes with the benefits of an existing resource,

low capital expenditure relative to new mines, shorter

lead-times to production and lower carbon footprint.

The Trump administration's rush to ditch anything associated

with Biden's green agenda risks overlooking the one part of the

domestic copper supply chain that is already attracting

investment and increasing capacity.

If "mine baby mine" is the mantra, channelling more federal

funds into "urban mining" is going to reap faster rewards than

any big new conventional mine.

The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a

columnist for Reuters

(Editing by David Evans)