Followup Report on Domestic Aluminum Resources: Dilemmas of Development

Concerns about supply disruptions and price gouging that could endanger aluminum production in this country have spurred Bureau of Mines research on processes to manufacture alumina from nonbauxitic ores. The United States has no large bauxite deposits, but it has plentiful deposits of other aluminum ores if the technology can be developed to use them economically. Bauxite and alumina are scheduled to be added to the critical minerals model of the Office of Minerals Policy Research and Analysis, and the Bureau of Mines program funds for mineral research have been revised. A GAO report was highly critical of both management objectives, overshadowing economics, and the fact that the Department of Interior's patent policy usually required the Secretary to make the results of supported research and development available for licensing without royalty. These two factors, according to the Department, deterred the Bureau's more active consideration of proprietary processes in its nonbauxitic alumina program.