By Kennedy Maize
The Trump administration last week (July 11) joined a groundbreaking ceremony at a new Wyoming coal mine, where the more important product is expected to be rare earth minerals. At the same time, the administration was buying a controlling interest in the only currently producing U.S. rare earth mine, in southern California.
In Ranchester, Wyo., some 10 miles north of Sheridan in the north central part of the Cowboy State, Kentucky-based metallurgical coal company Ramaco Resources Inc. (NASDAQ:METC) cut the ribbon on a revival of a long-shuttered mine. The modest output of thermal coal will help reduce the cost of mining much more valuable rare earths neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium, and critical minerals gallium, scandium and germanium.
As the Associated Press summarized, “Neodymium and dysprosium are used in the permanent magnets of wind turbines, lanthanum in electric and hybrid car batteries. Yttrium and terbium have critical military uses, including in targeting devices.” Magnets are also critical in civilian and military aircraft.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright was on hand to spread optimism about the first new Wyoming coal mine in 50 years, the Brook Mine, although the real money makers that render the mine viable aren’t the coal sales. “Not only do we get coal here, we are going to get those rare earth elements that are going to break our dependence on China,” Wright said hyperbolically.
Rare earths are not rare, but they are most often spread widely and in thin, often difficult to mine, deposits. The geology at the Brook Mine, abandoned in the 19th century, makes exploiting the rare earths a potentially profitable enterprise.
Ramaco, based in Lexington, Ky., operates four met coal mines in West Virginia and Virginia. It acquired the ancient Brook Mine in 2011 for $2 million, aiming to supply steam coal to electric generators. Ramaco CEO Randy Atkins recounted, “We figured out pretty soon that the market was shifting and it was difficult to justify economically putting in a new utility focused thermal coal mine.”
In 2023, Ramaco discovered it was sitting on top of a large supply of minable rare earths and critical minerals, some 1.7 million tons of the target mineral oxides. Ramaco hired Fluor Corp. for an economic assessment of the prospects for mining the rare earths. In its estimate, publicly released June 9, “Fluor concludes that the Brook Mine Rare Earth Project is both technically and economically viable. As a result, Fluor recommends that Ramaco proceed with the continued development of the project.”
Fluor projected an “unlevered pre-tax internal rate of return (IRR) of 38% and a payback period of 5 years under the base case scenario.”
Atkins explained to Wyoming public radio what he plans for the mine. He said, “We will mine, let’s call it as an example 2 million tons of coal. And out of 2 million tons of coal, we’ll get, ultimately, once it’s refined, about 1,200 tons of oxide. 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.”
Ramaco has started building a pilot plant for processing the rare earths and expects it to run for about a year, figuring out how to upscale for full production. Commercial production would start in 2028.
The Brook Mine would be the first rare earths mine to start in the U.S. in 70 years.
The day before the Wyoming ground breaking ceremony, at that mine, the only operating U.S. rare earths producer, MP Materials (NYSE:MP) of Las Vegas, announced a deal with the Pentagon, the firm’s major customer for magnets used in aircraft and other military hardware. According to the company, DOD “agreed to purchase $400 million of a newly-created series of the Company’s preferred stock convertible into shares of the Company’s common stock, and a warrant permitting DoD to purchase additional shares of the Company’s common stock.”
MP Materials said that because of the deal “DoD is positioned to become the Company’s largest shareholder. On an as-converted and as-exercised basis, the convertible preferred stock and the warrant represent, in the aggregate, 15% of the Company’s issued and outstanding shares of common stock as of July 9, 2025.”
MP’s Mountain Pass mine in southeastern California’s San Berardino County began life as a gold mine in 1936. In 1949, uranium prospectors discovered rare earth minerals. In 1952, Molybdenum Corporation of America bought most of the mining claims and went into production.
In the 1960s, demand for europium exploded with the arrival of color television. Between 1965 and 1995 the mine provided most of the world’s rare earths. The company changed its name to Molycorp in 1974, was acquired by Union Oil in 1977, which in turn was gobbled up by Chevron in 2005.
A 2002 toxic waste spill closed the mine, which did not reopen until 2012. Now facing fierce competition from China, Molycorp filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2015, leaving the mine idled. A group of hedge fund investors founded MP Materials, acquired the mine, and brought it back into production, where it is currently the second largest rare earths producer in the world. The Bayan Obo mine in China’s Inner Mongolia is the world’s largest in terms of production and reserves, producing some 50% of world supply, according to the international trade paper NS Energy.
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