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.
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.
Ramaco recently started drilling 700 feet down, deeper than it has gone previously, and has extracted more samples to analyze the chemical characteristics of the rare earths and where they are located. Such analysis will help inform the best way to mine, extract, separate and process the rare earths.
“What we’re doing here is neat to younger people,” he said. “It’s novel, cutting-edge science and tech. Rare-earth deposits open up completely different horizons for this community.” -  Atkins says to the Wall Street  Journal