Potential $37 billion rare earth mineral deposit found in Wyoming mine

An old coal mine in rural Wyoming was recently found to contain deposits of rare earth minerals that could be worth up to $37 billion.

Brook Mine is located near the city of Sheridan and was acquired by a former Wall Street banker back in 2011 for the price of $2 million, with the intention of extracting and selling coal.

However, investigating the site further with the help of researchers from the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory and their new AI model, the minerals were found.

New tests indicate that the reserve of rare earth minerals existing in Brook Mine could potentially be as much as 1.2 million metric tons. To put that into perspective, according to the USGS, domestic annual consumption of such materials is roughly 8,300 metric tons.

As for the rare minerals themselves, they can be used for the creation of wind turbines, electrical vehicles, and other technological applications.

Another factor that makes this discovery crucial is that China used to be responsible for the import of 74% of such minerals to the US from 2018 to 2021, but in July 2023 it restricted export amounts of some of them.

Finally, if the discovery stands to the predicted numbers, Brook Mine is going to be the first discovery of rare earth mineral deposits in the US since the discovery of California’s Mountain Pass in 1952.