The $2 Million Coal Mine That Might Hold a $37 Billion Treasure
Wyoming discovery could be America’s first new source of rare-earth elements since 1952.
The rare-earths find at a site owned by Ramaco Resources comes as the U.S. works to secure supplies of the minerals for use in electric vehicles and offshore wind turbines., among other purposes.
The rare-earths find at a site owned by Ramaco Resources comes as the U.S. works to secure supplies of the minerals for use in electric vehicles and offshore wind turbines., among other purposes.
Twelve years ago, former Wall Street banker Randall Atkins bought an old coal mine outside Sheridan, Wyo., sight unseen, for about $2 million.
He thought the mine might eke out a profit. Instead, Atkins recently learned it could bring a windfall.
Several years after Atkins bought the Brook Mine, government researchers came around asking if they could run some tests to see if the ground contained something called “rare-earth elements.”
When Atkins acquired the mine, he says he “didn’t know the difference between rare earths and rare coins.” When he got the test results, including some as recently as September, he says he was surprised and humbled: His sleepy mine contains what might be the largest so-called unconventional rare-earth deposit in the U.S., according to government researchers.
At current market prices, it could be worth around $37 billion.
Atkins’s company, Ramaco Resources METC 2.45%increase; green up pointing triangle, recently started extracting larger samples for more analysis. If the project proceeds as intended, it would be the first new rare-earths mine in the U.S. since 1952.
It is a heady expansion—and lofty mission—for a $620 million company whose main focus has been mining metallurgical coal, the kind used in steelmaking. And it could be personally fulfilling for Atkins, whose father built a global energy conglomerate before he became ensnared in a series of scandals, including Watergate.
The U.S. is racing to catch up on rare-earth supplies with China, among other countries, as the minerals are in ever-greater demand for a variety of uses, including electric vehicles and offshore wind turbines.
In a move seen as retaliation against U.S. export restrictions, China recently limited the export of two minerals, gallium and germanium, which are used in semiconductors, missile systems and solar cells. Those minerals were included in the samples tested at Atkins’s site in Wyoming.
The U.S. consumed an annual average of 8,300 metric tons of rare-earth oxides in recent years, according to estimates from the U.S. Geological Survey. Ramaco and its third-party consultant estimate there are as much as around 1.1 million metric tons of rare-earth oxides in just over a quarter of the nearly 16,000 acres of land that comprise the site.
The deposit was found in conjunction with researchers at the Energy Department’s National Energy Technology Laboratory. They spent years developing a model that combines data with artificial intelligence to predict unconventional deposits of rare earths and critical minerals, and it forecast sizable deposits in the Powder River Basin in northeast Wyoming, which includes the Ramaco site.
“We ended up discovering world class-enrichment” of so-called heavy rare earths, which are more valuable than light ones, said Burt Thomas, a NETL researcher.
Ramaco’s stash, which comprises both heavy and light rare earths, includes neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium. Some elements are in the coal itself, while most are found within the clays and carbon-rich materials at the tops and bottoms of coal seams.
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