Between industrial sheds and circular storage tanks ringed by the savanna of inland Goiás state, Serra Verde runs the only rare earth mine in commercial production in Brazil. It was there, and at three other projects spread across the country, that the federal government watched foreign investors speed up their bets in recent months, a movement that pushed President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to demand urgency from Congress in regulating the sector.

According to Folha de S.Paulo, Lula this week asked Senate president Davi Alcolumbre (União-AP) to speed up the vote on the bill that creates rules for the exploration of critical minerals, a group of strategic inputs that includes rare earths, used in magnets, electric motors and electronics. The request came after the government verified a rush by foreign investors to join or expand stakes in four rare earth projects in the country, before the new rules take effect.

Four projects in foreign hands

In recent days, the Serra Verde project in Goiás and the Colossus project in Poços de Caldas, in Minas Gerais state, announced additional investments from the United States Department of Defense and Australian mining company Viridis totaling US$ 870 million, about R$ 4.5 billion at current exchange rates. Before them, the Caldeira project, run by Australia's Meteoric, also in Poços de Caldas, and Borborema, owned by Brazilian Rare Earths in Bahia state, received foreign funding in January and April 2026, after the debate over the regulatory framework had already begun.

According to Folha, in the cases of Serra Verde and Colossus the money is meant to expand foreign participation in the companies' capital, which in practice means taking control of both firms. In the other two projects, the investments finance the development of exploration. The Planalto Palace, Brazil's presidential office, fears investors may draw up strategies capable of disrupting the plan to regulate the sector and to require that part of the ore's production chain be processed inside Brazil.

A race against the electoral calendar

In pressing Alcolumbre, Lula argued that other countries have already moved ahead with laws limiting foreign access to minerals considered strategic, Australia among them, and that in his view Brazil could not fall behind in that context. The two met on Wednesday (26) with the Speaker of the lower house, Hugo Motta (Republicanos-PB), to define Congress's priority agenda before the October elections. According to G1, the president said there are "many foreigners" buying Brazil's critical minerals before the country regulates the sector.

The coordination among the three leaders could unblock the proposal in the Senate, according to NeoFeed, but any changes to the text would send the bill back to the lower house, a back and forth that competes with the electoral calendar. While the legislative process moves forward in Brasília, the sheds and tanks of Serra Verde keep pace with the Goiás excavators, surrounded by the same savanna that has now become the center of a dispute over who will control what comes out of Brazilian soil.