 [Epoch Times] A mine in Wyoming is drawing national attention to what is otherwise a high plains flyspeck with a single gas station, Dollar Store, and four bars along the Tongue River.
In the Bighorn Mountains, Brook Mine will be the first new coal mine to open in Wyoming in 50 years, as well as the first critical mineral and rare earth mine to open in the United States in more than 70 years. Miner Ramaco Resources is to produce at least 2 million tons of coal per year for electricity and extract more than 450 tons of elements annually.
That 2 million tons of coal, once processed, will yield an estimated 1,242 tons of critical minerals and rare earths per year. According to the Fluor study, this would include 456 tons of the highly sought gallium, germanium, scandium, terbium, dysprosium, neodymium, and praseodymium.
I assume that's 456 million tons of ore, not rare earth elements.
"This one mine can break our reliance on China," Ramaco Resources CEO and Chairman Randall Atkins said at a July 11 ceremonial ribbon-cutting for the mine about three miles away, at Ramaco’s offices and labs.
The ribbon-cutting drew a high-profile retinue, including Energy Secretary Chris Wright; Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon; Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.); Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.); state lawmakers; and former Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.), who joined Ramaco’s board in April.
"The generations of coal miners who gave us the lives we have today, those same coal miners that are still delivering the world’s largest source of electricity, they’re going to give us, through mining of those same coal resources, these rare earth elements... and they’re going to bring us back," Wright said, calling for a "revolution" in domestic energy self-sufficiency, especially in processing critical minerals and rare earths.
Ramaco Resources, based in Lexington, Kentucky, operates four metallurgical coal mines in West Virginia and Virginia. It purchased the 4,500-acre Brook Mine north of Sheridan, Wyoming, in 2011 for $2 million to produce coal for local electrical generation, Atkins said during a tour of Ramaco’s Ranchester plant. Opened in the 1880s, the mine had been shuttered for decades.
Ramaco plans to build a plant to process the critical mineral oxides on site or on the 11,500 surrounding acres it owns to "bring magnet and semiconductor manufacturing in Wyoming," Atkins said.
The company said the mine could meet up to 5 percent of the nation’s total demand for permanent magnets, including nearly one-third of the Pentagon’s needs.
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