First rare earth mineral mine in America in over 70 years breaks ground in Wyoming

For the first time in more than 70 years, a rare earth minerals mine broke ground in the United States last Friday. The Brook Mine, owned by Ramaco Resources, near Sheridan, Wyoming, is also the first new coal mine in the state to have opened in decades.

“I think it’s certainly going to be a great game changer for Ramaco,” said Randy Atkins, CEO of the coal mining company, Ramaco Resources. “But, honestly, it’s a great game changer for the country.”

The significance of the event was evident by those who traveled to the mine location in the Powder River Basin of north-central Wyoming, which has actually been digging for about a month to prepare for the ceremony. From the Trump administration, Energy Secretary Chris Wright joined local politicians including Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, Sens. John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis and Rep. Harriet Hageman for the ribbon cutting.

“We want to see the coal production grow in this country. This particular mine — and I’m sure there will be more — also is going to bring rare earth element production,” Wright said in a video on his X account. “Let’s celebrate American hydrocarbon production and the renaissance we’re entering.”

The change that Wright is referencing is the Trump administration’s emphasis on extractive energy production, which has pushed for greater drilling and leasing for carbon-based fossil fuels and marks a departure from, as Wright put it in the video, the “simply, wrong headed and foolish war against hydrocarbon production” of preceding administrations.

But the presence of rare earth elements at the Brook Mine is a potentially more significant occasion than just a new era of coal production.

The minerals found in that Wyoming deposit such as scandium, gallium and germanium, have become significant geopolitical chess pieces as they are necessary for the production of renewable energy sources, batteries and defense systems — major end users of germanium include fiber optics, infrared optics, solar cells and electronics — and are only available and refinable in few places. As such, the United States is heavily dependent on foreign nations for the vast majority of what is needed to meet its growing demand.

There are other locations in the U.S. where they are found, including neighboring Montana. Salt Lake City-based U.S. Critical Minerals announced that it had discovered a large deposit of gallium in Sheep Creek, Montana, last year. The area also contains 13 of the materials deemed “critical minerals.” The company inked an agreement with Idaho National Laboratory to develop processing for those rare earth minerals, including gallium separation.

Proponents say the effort could potentially forge environmentally responsible mining and processing to mitigate environmental concerns, but its timing is as of yet still behind the Brook Mine.

Ukraine has large deposits of rare earth minerals, which were heavily discussed earlier this year during Trump’s attempts to broker a cease fire with Russia, but it is China that dominates the rare earth element industry.

Not only is China the largest producer, representing some 60% of the world’s supply, it’s also the largest refiner of rare earth minerals in the world, according to the Wall Street Journal, where it controls more than 90% of the market. Currently, the U.S. receives about 70% of its supply from China. And recently, China banned exports of gallium and germanium to the United States putting these minerals at a potentially higher monetary and political premium.

Atkins bought the Brook Mine in 2011 from Brinks, the armored car company, which used to have divested interests. At that point, the company had not touched it in 40 years and was looking for a quick sale. Atkins paid approximately $2 million for the mine, which has the potential to be worth quite a bit more than that now.

When Ramaco was considering what to do with the site, Atkins said he knew that utility companies were using less coal for energy production and so it pivoted on its plan away from pure coal mining. It sought other ways that the coal could be used for different, more scientifically or technologically advanced commercial purposes.

In that search, the company discovered rare earth minerals above and below the seams of the Wyoming coal deposits. Situated in those “under” and “over carriages,” as they are referred, was a massive stockpile of a far less radioactive quantity of the various elements that are necessary for so many significant, emerging industries.

Ramaco had an independent assessment done by Fluor Industries, which was published July 1. The report found that not only did the mine have a lot of rare earth minerals, but it was confirmed that the project — after more than 10 years of time and money already invested — would be both technically and commercially feasible.

The mine, which is the only one of its kind even remotely close to production in the United States, has the chance to offset America’s dependence on Chinese rare earth minerals. And, the lack of radioactivity means those elements do not need to be exported for refinement either. Ramaco can do that, too, onsite.

“It’s a complete domestic supply line. We can mine it here. We can process it here. We can certainly sell it to domestic customers,” Atkins said. “But more importantly, we can essentially almost take this to magnets or semiconductors, and manufacture that on site at some point in the future if we want to go that far up the food chain.”

Atkins said Ramaco will have a pilot refining facility up and running by this summer, with hopes of something more permanent by 2026. And, since the company has to extract the coal in order to access the minerals, the extraction process will be dual-use with the coal able to go to market, too.

Between the upfront costs of research and assessments, as well as developing a refinement plant coming in at over half a billion dollars, the income from the coal is welcome, said Atkins. Plus, he anticipates that the operation will employ hundreds of people. In a remote part of Wyoming — the nearest “big” town, Sheridan, has a population of just over 19,000 — it could be quite a significant employer, too.

And while Ramaco has worked closely with the U.S. Department of Energy, which has asked the company to speed up its production, it has not yet received any grants or incentives. Atkins hopes and anticipates that those will be available in the future.

“This is a very exciting thing for Wyoming. It’s an exciting thing for the West. It’s an exciting thing for our country,” Atkins said. “A rising tide carries all boats, and this is definitely a rising tide for our country.”

Contributing: Amy Joi O’Donoghue