That rare earth minerals are being found in the United States, which has to import most of its rare earth minerals from China, is exciting news. As reports begin to emerge about rare earth minerals discoveries in the US – such as that in Ravalli County, Montana – a question emerges about why the discoveries are coming only now.

For example, a report from Wyoming in Cowboy State Daily has announced that “The US could soon become a world leader in rare earth minerals after over two billion metric tons were found in Wyoming. The discovery could mean America over taking China, whose supplies stand at 44 million metric tons.”

Rare earth elements are a group of 17 elements that are essential for both domestic and for military technology.  They are used in the production of medical equipment, clean energy components, electric vehicles, electronics, and more. Demand for them is expected to explode in the near future. The US imports most of its needs for rare earths from China. Demand for the metals is expected to soar up to seven times current levels by 2040, according to the International Energy Agency.

Over the decades there was only one rare earth minerals mine, Mountain Pass in California, in the US and it was owned by the Chinese. How that came to be was a matter of little foresight and over regulation in the United States.

In a six-year report from Defense News, the lack of interest in pursuing more development in the US was made more clear.

Mountain Pass was opened as a uranium deposit, but came to supply rare earths for the electronic needs of the “Cold War economy.” Until the 1990s, it stood alone as the only major source of rare earths worldwide.

By 2002, the mine became defunct, because to the U.S. government and major manufacturers, it no longer made sense to acquire rare earths from a U.S. source that was subject to stringent environmental regulations. It made more sense to import the minerals needed from other countries.

China was happy to oblige.

In 2008, a group of investors formed Molycorp to reopen the Mountain Pass mine, with the intent of delivering a secure supply chain, but their plans failed and eventually the mine was purchased out of bankruptcy by a consortium that included a Chinese-owned firm.

The article stated, “Reducing red tape and bureaucratic inertia will lower costs and reduce risk — there is no reason that permitting a mine in the United States should take five times longer than it does in Canada or Australia.”

Since the prospects look brighter at the moment for development of rare earth mineral mines, with development of better technologies, more rational regulations and a profound interest from the US military and domestic markets, suddenly there emerges news that rare earth mining might indeed be possible in the US.

Just a couple weeks ago US Critical Materials announced that their find in a 50-year old abandoned mine at Sheep Creek in Ravalli County, Montana holds the highest reported grades of any known deposit in the United States, according to an independent analysis from Activation Labs. Besides having the highest reported grades of any known deposit in the United States, said Activation Labs, the mine has the highest concentrations of gallium—a material essential to national security.

Near Wheatland, Wyoming comes another announcement from American Rare Earths Inc. They claim that they may have “hit the mother load”, dwarfing another find in northeastern Wyoming, which was claimed to be “one of the biggest discoveries in the world.” American Rare Earths is the U.S.-based unit of an Australian-founded exploration company working in Wyoming.

Mining.com has ranked the Halleck Creek rare earths find as the fifth largest in the world outside of others discovered in Greenland, Canada and Kenya.

American Rare Earths wants to mine and process these metals – particularly neodymium and praseodymium – through its Wyoming Rare (USA) Inc. unit, which controls 367 mining claims on 6,320 acres of a mix of state, federal and private land across the Halleck Creek Project area near Wheatland, and four Wyoming mineral leases on  1,844 acres on the same project.

Worldwide rare earth mineral demand stands at about 60,000 tons annually. A metric ton equals about 2,200 pounds while a ton is 2,000 pounds.

Latest drilling revealed that the ore is more extensive and of higher quality, making it potentially even more valuable than anything else in the state,

The company said it could move more quickly to establish a mining operation on 320 acres of state land where permitting would happen at a faster clip than on federally owned land.

Also, in Wyoming, Rare Element Resources Ltd., a Canadian exploration company, is setting up shop on a large rare earth deposit in Upton, Wyoming, with a novel new mining process that promises to speed up rare earth processing. This is called the Bear Lodge Project. 

The Wyoming unit of Rare Element Resources, which controls 100% of the Bear Lodge mineral rights held through federal mining claims in Upton, is betting $44 million that its mining process is a game-changer for U.S. rare earth production. 

And still more — Ramaco Resources revealed it had found a deposit of rare minerals near Sheridan in Wyoming, that could have a value of $37 billion. The company said, “We only tested it for 100, 200 feet, which is about the maximum you’d ever want to do a conventional coal mine.”

Besides these finds of rare earth minerals, geologists are reporting that there are millions of tons rare earth minerals to be found in coal ash, the chalky remnants of coal that has been burned for fuel from by power plants. There are piles and piles of coal ash, long considered a waste by-product, across the US.

The new research found that there could be as much as 11 million tons – worth $8.4 billion — of rare earth elements in accessible coal ash in the United States, which is nearly eight times the amount that the U.S. currently has in domestic reserves.

Even though the level of rare earth elements in coal ash is relatively low when compared with those mined from geological deposits, the fact that the ash is readily available in large quantities makes it an attractive resource, said co-author Davin Bagdonas, a research scientist at the University of Wyoming.

Not only have ventures to retrieve the rare earth minerals been reported in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Texas, but there has been talk that in Colstrip, Montana, too, the possibility will be explored.