The energy world is looking to Wyoming this week, as the nation’s first rare earth mine in decades breaks ground near the Bighorn Mountains.
A few weeks ago, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright spoke to congressional lawmakers, including Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyoming), on the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
“I'll be in your great state on July 11 for the opening of a new coal mine that’s combined with rare earth element mining right there,” Wright said.
Ramaco Resources bought an existing coal mine near Ranchester in 2011. The mine was first opened in the late 1800s, but has been defunct for decades. While Ramaco will reopen it for coal mining, they’re not specifically in that business.
“Frankly, compared to major [Wyoming] coal companies,” said Ramaco CEO Randy Atkins, referencing Powder River Basin operations that mine tens of millions of tons of coal yearly, “you know, at two to four to five, even if we got up to eight million tons or so, that's a very small mine by Wyoming standards.”
Atkins said he initially bought the mine aiming for coal.
“We figured out pretty soon that the market was shifting and it was difficult to justify economically putting in a new utility focused thermal coal mine,” he said.
Then they realized they were sitting on large deposits of rare earth and critical minerals, like terbium, dysprosium and gallium, which are needed for national defense gear and semiconductors. So they shifted.
“We are the only place that we are aware of, and the government's aware of, that will produce those rare earths in the continental U.S.,” he said.
Atkins has said he believes the Brook Mine Carbon Ore Rare Earth project could support between 3 and 5% of the country’s permanent magnet demand. While there is another domestic source of rare earth elements, Brook Mine has the unique combination of sourcing both heavy rare earth elements and critical minerals.
Right now, China dominates the market.
Atkins said they’ll mine coal in order to get at the minerals, which is a novel concept.
“We will mine, let's call it as an example 2 million tons of coal. And out of 2 million tons of coal, we'll get, ultimately, once it's refined, about 1,200 tons of oxide,” Atkins said. “So it's a tremendous amount of material that you have to mine and process to get a relatively small amount of very valuable rare earths.”
An independent preliminary economic analysis report made by Fluor Corporation found that based on the current mine plan to produce 2 million tons of coal per year, “1,242 annual short tons of oxide are projected to be produced, which include 456 tons of gallium, germanium, scandium, terbium, dysprosium, neodymium, and praseodymium. Given the size of the Brook Mine deposit, this level of both mining and processed oxide production is scalable.”
The company’s exploration target shows up to 1.7 million tons of critical mineral oxides exist in the currently permitted 4,500-acre area of the Brook Mine. The company says another roughly 11,500 acres remain for future exploration and development.
The groundbreaking of the Brook Mine Carbon Ore Rare Earth project is happening in Ranchester on Friday at 1 p.m., with Sec. Wright in attendance.
Atkins said they’ll start mining and selling samples within a year, but a full commercial operation is still a few years out. It’ll also require hundreds of millions of dollars to build out a “pretty complex plant” for processing the minerals.
Atkins said they’ve been asked to expedite their time frame under the Trump administration’s Unleashing American Energy executive order. He added that they haven’t received federal funds yet, outside of initial research, and are in talks to secure federal contributions.
