Department of State
During Secretary of State Marco Rubio's trip to Barranquilla, Colombia, on September 8, he and Colombian Foreign Minister Omar Bula signed two arrangements to advance cooperation in the fields of critical minerals and civil nuclear cooperation. These arrangements are part of our countries' efforts to reinvigorate the over 200-year U.S.-Colombia partnership and restore it as a linchpin of security and economic cooperation in our hemisphere.
The Critical Minerals Framework:
- Establishes a U.S.-Colombia framework to secure resilient, diversified, and fair supply chains for critical minerals and rare earths, committing both governments to mobilize government and private sector support-via guarantees, loans, equity, offtake arrangements, insurance, or regulatory facilitation-to jointly identify and finance mining and processing projects within six months of signing.
- Calls for streamlined permitting, market-protective pricing mechanisms such as price floors, national security review tools for critical minerals asset sales, investment in minerals recycling technology, and cooperation on geological mapping.
The Civil Nuclear Cooperation Memorandum of Understanding:
- Establishes a bilateral framework for strategic civil nuclear cooperation between the United States and Colombia, grounded in Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations and International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards, as Colombia considers deploying nuclear power to advance energy security and deepen the two countries' broader strategic relationship.
- Expresses joint intent to collaborate across regulatory capacity-building, industry partnerships, and scientific and academic exchanges to support Colombia's civil nuclear infrastructure and workforce development; explore U.S. nuclear technologies (including advanced and small modular reactors), fuel, equipment, and services; and pursue both power and non-power applications such as research reactors, radioisotopes, nuclear medicine, agriculture, and waste management-all while upholding the highest standards of safety, security, and non-proliferation.
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