Ramaco Resource’s Rare Earths Project will extract a relatively small amount of coal but the mine is loaded with minerals that domestic industry now imports.
RANCHESTER, Wyo.—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.
Tumbling out of 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 a year for electricity and extract more than 450 tons of elements annually.
“This one mine can break our reliance on China,” Ramaco Resources CEO and chair Randy Atkins said at a July 11 ceremonial ribbon-cutting for the mine about three miles away, at Ramaco’s offices and labs. The nearest town is Ranchester of 1,064 residents, less than 10 miles south of the Montana state line and about 180 miles east of Yellowstone National Park.
“Not every day do you get to see history being made but that’s exactly what we’re doing here today,” he told about 300 people gathered, recalling that a decade ago, the coal industry’s prognosis was grim.
“They said coal was dead and gone. Today, we’re breathing new life with a commodity America has an abundance of,” Atkins said. “This is just the beginning. If we can do it here in Wyoming, we can do it everywhere.”
The ribbon-cutting drew a high-profile retinue, including U.S. 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.V.), 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.
“We need to mine them, process them, refine them in our country so we are self-sufficient and independent,” he said. “We’re in a place today we cannot be. We need a revolution. And, therefore, we shall have a revolution.
“I hope,” Wright added, “we will all remember this day, the day when that pivot came and we drove towards that American strength and self-sufficiency.”
By John Haughey
