Ground was to be officially broken Friday in Wyoming at the site of a long-defunct coal mine where the first rare-earth mining operations are opening in the United States in more than 70 years, according to the Trump administration.
"The U.S. is opening its first Rare Earth mine in more than 70 years, providing a critical supply of six of the seventeen Rare Earth elements that are used in everything from war planes to semiconductors to our smartphones," the administration's Rapid Response 47 team announced on X.
The mining operations are at the site of a one-time coal mine near Wyoming's Bighorn Mountains, which was revealed to have large deposits of several vital rare earth and critical minerals, such as terbium, dysprosium, and gallium, which are necessary for semiconductors and national defense purposes, Wyoming Public Media reported.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright, former West Virginia U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, and Wyoming's congressional delegation were on the VIP list Friday for the groundbreaking ceremony at the Ramaco Resources, Inc., Brook Mine in the northern part of the state. The ceremony was scheduled for 1 p.m. local time.
Ramaco bought the coal mine, which had been defunct for decades, in 2011, intending to reopen it for coal mining.
The company will mine for coal but also plans to extract rare earth minerals from it, said company CEO Randy Atkins.
"Out of 2 million tons of coal, we'll get, ultimately, once it's refined, about 1,200 tons of oxide," he said. "So it's a tremendous amount of material that you have to mine and process to get a relatively small amount of very valuable rare earths."
Atkins said the project could support 3% to 5% of the permanent magnet demands in the U.S. There is another rare earth mine, the Mountain Pass mine in California's Mojave Desert, but Atkins said the Brooke Mine is the only one to source heavy rare earth elements and critical minerals.
According to Ramaco's exploration target, there are up to 1.7 million tons of the critical mineral oxides in the now-permitted 4,500 acres at Brook Mine, with another 11,500 acres remaining for future development.
Atkins said that samples will start to be sold within a year, with a full commercial operation remaining a few years away.
He added that hundreds of millions of dollars are needed to build a "pretty complex plant" to process the minerals.
The company has been asked to expedite its operations under President Donald Trump's executive order to unleash American energy. Atkins said that the company has not gotten any federal funding outside of its initial research, but is in discussions to secure contributions for the project.
China supplies nearly 90% of the world's rare earth materials, leading to concerns about access to the substances from the U.S.
With information from wire reports.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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