American Rare Earths Teams Up with DOE Fund R&D

American Rare Earths (ARR) has partnered with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) funded research and development program to drill projects in Wyoming and Arizona. Previously, Western Rare Earths, a subsidiary of American Rare Earths, was named a member of the DOE's Energy Innovation Center - Critical Materials Institute, and in March, ARR's Halleck Creek Rare Earths Project in Wyoming was launched for drilling.

Western Rare Earths will provide feedstock for the U.S. Department of Defense's advanced research programs from its Halleck Creek and La Paz projects in Arizona, where the company received all necessary permits and began drilling last year.

The mission of the Critical Materials Institute is to innovate to secure the supply chain for materials critical to clean energy technologies, with a focus on the U.S. rare earths supply chain. A bipartisan piece of legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate in January would force defense contractors to stop buying rare earths from China by 2026 and use the Pentagon to build a permanent stockpile of the strategic mineral.

Rare earths are a group of 17 metals that are processed and used to make magnets in electric cars, weaponry, and electronics. While the United States created the industry in World War II, China has gradually taken control of the entire industry over the past 30 years.

There is only one rare earth mine in the U.S., Mountain Pass, California, owned by MP Materials, which is backed by Chinese investors. The U.S. does not currently have the capacity to process rare earth minerals.

"There are a number of research projects or organizations that are seeking funding from the US Defense Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to look at breakthrough technologies and research in rare earth processing that are using our feedstock, and what makes our project unique is that our deposits are very low in thorium, a highly radioactive element that is found in most other rare earth projects," said Chris Gibbs, general manager of ARR.

A subsidiary of American Rare Earths is one of the two rare earth miners working with the Group, the other is Rio Tinto.

"Our feedstock at La Paz and Halleck Creek, both have very low levels of thorium, so when it comes to bioengineering projects for some of these studies, the radioactive ores are highly elsewhere, there's a lot of interest in using and testing our material, and that's what makes our project a little unique."

Gibbs said groundbreaking activities at the company's project sites indicate they are in good mining jurisdictions and at grades three times higher than other rare earth projects, enough to make the projects economically viable.

A surface sampling program of a total of 197 samples collected at Halleck Creek during the summer of 2021 showed a mean value of 3187 ppm for total rare earth oxides (TREO) and a combined mean value of 702 ppm for Nd and Pr.

The company said it is working on breakthrough technologies as American Rare Earths becomes part of the Key Materials Institute, a collaboration with a U.S. DOE fund research and development program that it hopes will address the issue of rare earth supply.

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