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Show Foreign ownership of U.S. minerals (Special to the Vernal Express) By Helene C. Monberg Washington Chairman Jim Santini, D-Nev., w ill hold a series of hearings in early February to lay the groundwork for review of foreign ownership of U.S. mineral resources. Specifically those on federal lands, in his House Mining Subcommittee. The hearings started on Nov. 10 w hen Santini had a hearing in Denver on the plight of the smelting industry in this country. They are due to resume shortly short-ly after Congress reconvenes this week. The hearings will be held here. Among the points raised by the Denver hearings was the Japanese grip on copper ore from the United States. Other nations are also moving in to take their bite out of American copper, according ac-cording to industry sources. Santini held the hearings to highlight the problems that American smelters are having conforming with the 1977 Clean Air Act and also to lay the groundwork for a review by the Interior Department and other agencies "of the indirect ownership and control by foreign persons of mineral resources on lands leased from the United States. Santini introduced a bill to provide for such a review last July 16, and it is co-sponsored by Reps. Bob Stump, D-Ariz., D. David Marriott, R-Utah, and Ray Kogovsek, D-Colo., and many other members of Congress, particularly particular-ly from the House Interior Committee on which Santini, Mariott and Kogovsek serve. The bill's findings provide that the discovery and development of mineral resources on lands owned by the United States "is essential to the health of the economy of the United States and to the security of the nation." Therefore, it finds, that "acquisition and control of mineral resources on lands owned by the United States by foreign persons may adversely affect" this nation. It directs the Secretary of Interior in consultation with Secretaries of other appropriate departments to undertake a study of indirect in-direct foreign investment in mineral resources on lands owned by the United States and to report six months later to Congress. It also places a nine month moratorium on any foreigner to buy or offer to buy more than five percent of the stock in a U.S. owned mineral company. com-pany. The survey is to include the possible adverse effects that foreign ownership of mineral resources on U.S. public lands may have on our national security securi-ty and on our foreign policy and to what degree if any "foreign countries permit non national ownership and control of their mineral resources and grant reciprocal privileges" to this country. In making the study, Interior is to look at mineral leases on U.S. lands with an aggregate market value of more than $50 million or a net worth of more than $100 million as of March 1, 1981. If the finding by Interior is adverse, as a result of the survey, and if the Santini bill were enacted into law, a foreign company may be "found ineligible ineligi-ble to hold leases" on U.S. lands "not to exceed 10 years" whether its ownership W'as direct or indirect. The Santini bill has zero chance to pass Congress and be enacted into law this year, particularly with the Ad- ministration giving no freebies to fast traveling Jim Santini, who is runing for the Senate. But it is likely to help deter major efforts by Japanese industry to make even greater inroads into the primary metal markets of the United States on the purchase, smelting and refining of the primary metals copper, cop-per, lead and zinc and then reselling thorn as a finished product in the U.S. market. Matthew P. Scanlon (cq) vice president presi-dent of the Phelps-Dodge Corp, told the Santini hearing in Denver, "There is a very real doubt whether we will be financially able to provide the increased increas-ed copper production that it appears this country will need in the last half of the 1980's" as U.S. smelting capacity is |