There’s a lot of hope, and maybe some hype, for commercial-scale rare earth element mining in Wyoming, which is home to one of the largest proven high-concentrated deposits in North America.
That interest comes at a time of increasing demand for rare earths, which are essential components for modern technologies but are mined almost exclusively outside the U.S. If the hope becomes reality, it could mean a potential new, billion dollar mining industry for Wyoming.
The Bear Lodge deposit near Sundance is perhaps the best prospect for commercial-scale production today, according to the Wyoming State Geological Survey. It is the most analyzed rare earth element deposit in the state, containing cerium, lanthanum, neodymium, and praseodymium — valuable elements for their magnetic qualities, according to state sources.
Rare Element Resources has already mined and set aside several tons of rare earth element-bearing ore there and will begin construction this year on a “demonstration” processing plant near Upton. The new processing facility is backed by a $22 million Department of Energy grant as well as $4.4 million from the state’s Energy Matching Funds program.
On the promising but still perhaps speculative side, American Rare Earths recently issued a technical report suggesting commercial concentrations of rare earth elements at its Halleck Creek property in the Laramie Range foothills west of Wheatland, as well as “significant potential” for a deposit at its Beaver Creek holdings in the southern Bighorn Mountains.
The most eye-popping rare earth claim in Wyoming, though, comes from Ramaco Resources.
In May, the Lexington, Kentucky-based company announced that chemical analysis of coring samples at its Brook coal mine outside Sheridan indicated a potential for more than half a million tons of rare earth oxides. Then in August, the company doubled its “exploration target” estimate to 1.2 million tons — a potential commercial play worth some $37 billion, according to the company.
Since the announcement, Ramaco CEO Randall Atkins has made the rounds on television shows and in business journals describing the potential at its Brook coal mine as a “10-year overnight sensation” that could, over several years, finally give the U.S. a competitive foothold in the global rare earth element market that China dominates.
“Coal might be a solution to a number of problems including, obviously, the rare earth situation in the United States,” Atkins told CNBC in November.
There are skeptics and differing opinions, however, regarding the commercial viability of producing and processing rare earth elements from the coal and clays at Ramaco’s Brook mine, which is regarded as an “unconventional” rare earth element target.
Rare opportunities
Rare earth elements occupy a special 17 spots on the periodic chart. Not only are they rare — at least in concentrated deposits — they’re highly valuable. They’re vital components for high-tech uses — military lasers, industrial magnets and batteries, for example — and a lot of technology that’s commonplace in everyday lives, like televisions, cell phones and computer screens.
These metallic, modern technology building blocks are in increasing demand, not only to meet needs in daily life, but for national security and the growing renewable energy sector, according to the Department of Energy.
Currently, China dominates the rare earth element market in both production and processing. In response, the Biden administration has directed the Department of Defense to support a $35 million effort to deploy rare earth processing for the nation’s only active rare earth mine at Mountain Pass, California, and another $700 million to launch a national processing chain for rare earth magnetics.
The Biden administration also wants to entice exploration of unconventional rare earth sources — specifically, coal. The bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act includes more than $17 million to support efforts to extract these elements from coal and coal byproducts such as coal ash. Though Wyoming was not among the three states initially targeted in the effort, state leaders say Wyoming — the nation’s largest coal producer — is primed to play a key role in the federal initiative.
Despite Wyoming’s proven and potential rare earth deposits, and federal and state interest in examining coal’s potential, there’s a lot more to consider at the onset. Specifically, the cost of permitting and building a mining operation from scratch. That’s where Ramaco intends to exploit its advantage at the Brook coal mine, which it purchased in 2011, despite its vastly lower concentrations of rare earth elements compared to the hard-rock targets at Bear Lodge, the Laramie Range and Bighorn Mountains.
Conventional and unconventional
When it comes to assessing rare earth element deposits and their commercial viability, mining companies typically look at the value of the individual rare elements that are present and, more generally, their overall concentration.
Despite what the name implies, “rare earth” elements aren’t that rare. They exist all over the earth’s crust, but rarely in concentrations worth mining and processing. The average rare earth element concentration for all rocks on the earth’s surface is 180 to 200 parts per million. The commercially viable threshold is about 1,000 ppm and above, or a “total rare earth oxide” concentration of about 0.1% per ton of rock.
At Bear Lodge, geologists have identified 16.3 million tons of host rock with an average concentration of 30,500 ppm, or 3.05% per ton, according to Rare Element Resources and the State Geological Survey. There are another estimated 32 million tons of host rock with a concentration of 2.58%. Those are “very good” concentrations that should prove commercially viable, said geologist Patty Webber of the Geological Survey.
At Halleck Creek, American Rare Earths has reported 2.3 billion tons of host rock with an estimated average concentration of 3,195 ppm or 0.32% per ton.
All of these findings track with what the Geological Survey knows about where rare earth elements might be found in Wyoming. The reported findings at the Brook coal mine, however, are regarded as preliminary, State Geologist Erin Campbell said. Ramaco, based on initial testing by the National Energy Technology Laboratory and analysis by Weir International, suggests that clays co-mingled with coal, and around the coal seams might have a concentration of up to 307 ppm.
While lower than the commercially viable 1,000 ppm for hard-rock sources, 307 ppm is still considered marginally economic for a clay resource, because it’s likely cheaper to process the rare earth elements from clays, according to the Geological Survey. Ramaco’s advantage is in having an existing permit to mine coal and existing industrial infrastructure to earn revenue by co-producing coal and rare earth deposits.
“So that changes the viability” of a potential commercial project, Webber said.
One of the challenges, however, is that rare earth concentrations in coals and clays, according to testing elsewhere in the state, tend to be scattershot.
“There doesn’t seem to be much homogeneity in coal deposits, so there’s a ton of variation in concentrations,” Webber said.
Similarly, a 2016 Geological Survey suggests that rare earth concentrations in Wyoming coal ash are low.
“Although REEs [rare earth elements] will concentrate in residual waste products derived from coal combustion,” according to the report, “the low amounts typically found in Wyoming coals combined with processing and transportation factors do not indicate economic potential for the extraction of REE from the coal under current conditions.”
The University of Wyoming School of Energy Resources, however, continues to examine the potential for rare earth elements in coal and coal ash.
Wyoming is gunning for rare earth exploration
There are also permitting challenges specific to mining and processing rare earth elements. Because they contain radioactive byproducts — uranium and thorium — an operator typically must obtain a permit from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The Wyoming Legislature, however, in 2022 passed a law allowing the Department of Environmental Quality to apply for primacy over federal permitting — a move that could speed up and lower the cost of permitting.
Both the state and federal governments want to encourage more rare earth exploration, Campbell said, not only to increase the nation’s supply, but for the potential to supplement jobs and revenue lost to the declining coal industry.
The Geological Survey has been conducting aerial magnetic surveys over southern portions of the Wind River Range, Granite Mountains and the Semino and Ferris mountains in central Wyoming, and has identified many previously unexamined outcroppings that could hold promise for rare earth elements and other minerals, Campbell said.
“So we do the basic groundwork and then release it to the public so that companies can get a sort of a hint of an area they’d like to look at further,” Campbell said. “I do think that Wyoming is currently poised quite well, relative to other states, in terms of having some good public data available, especially with the new airborne geophysical surveys that are being flown over the state.”
Help rare elements in Wyoming.
Thanks so much for the breadth and depth of this story. I’m a Californian that gets the critical role Wyoming’s mining has played and will play in creating the US-based supply chains needed for national security. Glad to hear the federal-money examples. I learned a lot quickly.
I just hope by having these minerals we don’t sell our state out to foreigners who don’t care about the impact they have on us or care . We have a wonderful place to live and not much outside influence on us and I would hate to see that end. Our country has no idea how this could affect our lifestyle.
Here’s a back-of-the-envelope analysis I did on Halleck Creek that might be of interest.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ARRNF/comments/1b95gx3/deep_dive_background_on_arrnf/
The Wyoming Geological Association is hosting a talk by Kayla Young of American Rare Earth on the topic of the Wyoming Mine Asset & Halleck Creek Mine on Friday, March 8 in Casper. The talk begins about noon. You would need to contact the WGA about details. Office hours 9:30 to 12:30 Mon – Thursday
More examples. My mining professor at SDSM&T had worked for Goldfields of South Africa during the 1930s examining gold mines for them. He found that only one gold mine out of 200 that were offered to Goldfields was an actual commercially feasible mine. In some of the mines he sampled, the owners would load a shotgun shell with gold and fire it at the face of the gold workings such that the gold samples Ed collected were ” salted “.
And, I met an attorney from Denver who had formed a new company every day on the Denver penny stock exchange – they raised $500,000 which was enough to drill one well and than the company went defunct – that was in the early 1980s when oil prices were high. Very, very few of the companies survived. And the next day, they formed another penny stock oil company, and another, and another.
Again, beware – very few of the rare earth prospects will prove out.
I think the abundance of rare earth minerals cited for the Ramaco coal operation near Sheridan are more than a little exaggerated , but can be easily validated by third party testing. But that’s tangential.
More exciting to me is the possibility that ” used” coal — the fly ash left over from combustion by the powerplants — has high potential for secondary usage . It is the coal industries ‘s dirtiest darkest secret that burning coal literally creates mountains of ash. There are 750 impoundments across America containing some billions of cubic yards of coal ash waste, a lot of it originating from Wyoming. Texas has by far the largest amount of fly ash impounded. Having said that , of the 125 million tons of new coal fly ash created every year, only 40 percent is reused to make new things, like cement.
In an extreme irony , the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington D.C. that is home to the EPA Environmental Protection Agency is a giant cement edifice that was purposely made from coal ash . Politics knows no bounds.
Point being, there can be an economically recoverable amount of Rare Earth minerals in coal fly ash. In fact, Wyoming subbituminous Powder River Basin coalbeds consistently have a higher than average concentration of rare earth , if you believe the studies. The one study that keyed in specifically to PBR coal was done by three researchers of Chinese heritage working together from the University of Wyoming, Georgia Tech , and West Virginia University. ( The link to the 2019 study —> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1002072119300274 ). They concluded it was feasible to refine fly ash for rare earths.
Maybe the best thing we can do with billions of tons of burnt coal waste is distill it and keep extracting worthwhile minerals , including but not limited to Rare Earths. After all , it’s already been mined is just lying there in heaps. We should endeavour to keep it out of those nasty ponds and landfills. Cement made with coal fly ash is actually stronger and longer lasting than traditional mix , so …?
The rally cry here in the West used to be ” there’s gold in them there hills “. Maybe in the 21st century it’s ” there’s Rare Earths in those ash piles” . Just a thought.
Mining has always been a highly promoted business including outright scams and promotions from the penny stock exchanges including the Vancouver stock exchange – its all about hype and promotion. I once had a Canadian mining engineer tell me he worked at the same mine in three different provinces – he was right – they simply moved the mining equipment to the next promotable site. I also had a cabin on an old tin mining claim in the Black Hills which was a promotion/scam job. One article I read about rare earths pointed out there were already over 300 targeted rare earth mines around the world and they expected the number to be reduced to 8-9 surviving commercial mines that had the highest assays and the lowest mining costs – usually in countries with few regulations.
The Bear Lodge mine sounds promising based on the concentrations of rare earths and its apparently reached the pilot plant phase of development which will affirm the ability to extract the ore from the host rock.
Years ago everyone jumped into the moly mining business and Anaconda opened up the Yarrington moly mine in Nevada – they immediately had to close it since the price of moly crashed because so many companies were targeting the moly business – a loss of over $300 million. In the end, moly was being produced primarily as a by-product of copper mining – not as the only recoverable mineral from a mine.
When the results of the aerial exploration surveys are widely distributed and made public – we can expect hundreds of mining claims being filed on the BLM and USFS lands – you’ve heard of a gold rush, well there have been silver rushes, tin rushes, lithium rushes, coal rushes, and many, many more. And yes, there was a coal bed methane rush and look at the results of that one!!! Beware of the overly promoted mining properties especially by startups and penny stocks – well established mining companies are less apt to promote rare earths but even they make mistakes such as the Yarrington moly mine. BEWARE!!!
On the revenue side of things, important to remember these minerals, if federal, pay a 0% royalty to the federal government when mined thanks to the very antiquated and desperately in need of reform 1872 Mining Law (coal is at 12.5% and oil & gas is mostly 12.5% with production from new leases at 16.67%). On the state side, they do not have a specific severance tax rate, rather they are in the miscellaneous minerals category with a 2% severance tax (coal is 6.5% & oil & gas is at 6%, with some sliding scale adjustments based on commodity market prices).
In about 1960 my family was staying at the Clarke-Miller Guest Ranch when I met a geologist who spent the entire summer exploring for molybdenum in Sawtooth Valley and the White Clouds. I thought he had found deposits. I don’t know if that area is protected.