The country that controls those corridors often enjoys far greater leverage than the country that simply owns the resource. On paper, it’s the heart of the global energy transition, but in practice, it sits thousands of kilometres from the nearest deep-water port (Figure 1). As the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act vividly exemplifies, Governments tend to assume that if minerals lie beneath their territory, they ultimately control their destiny. They are clearly one-sided, built for the southbound movement of manufactured goods and the northbound movement of raw minerals. Nicholas Vafeas is the founder and director of BluMelt Mineral Consulting Limited, an independent consultancy specializing in geological assurance, critical minerals and investment de-risking.