Mining in Crook County ramping up

SUNDANCE — Crook County’s local mining companies are seeing growth and development.

While Rare Element Resources prepares to open its pilot plant in Upton and makes moves toward establishing a mine in the Bearlodge, Strata Energy is expanding its production.

It’s a pretty exciting time at Strata, said CEO Ralph Knode last week, thanks to fundraising efforts from parent company Peninsula Energy.

“In the last eight months, they’ve raised over $100 million USD and it’s all going right into the expansion of our plant operations at Oshoto,” he told the county commissioners.

The uranium mine, he said, now has 53 full-time employees and is seeking to hire more, as well as 34 or 35 contracted employees. Including the around 50 construction workers currently on site, Knode said, Strata’s employees have grown to around 150 people.

Things have changed considerably even in the last month, Knode told the commission.

Strata’s original permit was for the entire operation but, initially, only what he refers to as the “front end” of the plant was built. Now, Strata is ramping up and the processing plant has more than doubled in size in an effort to increase self-sufficiency.

At the well fields themselves, two are being converted to the low pH solution that was permitted a couple of years ago, one is “just about done” and another is soon to come online, with an expansion request currently with the state.

“There’s a lot of work going on,” Knode said.

Meanwhile, RER is “essentially together with our plant,” reported spokesperson Roger Connett, with “one last module being slid in as we speak.”

The demo plant has passed the final Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspection and is awaiting the paperwork to confirm this, he continued.

RER is hoping that the plant will be in production by September for its year-long test of the proprietary technology.

RER’s new CEO Ken Mushinski has also been in contact with various companies that would like to build facilities on the 500- acre site, Connett said, such as one that builds magnetic motors.

“We plan on having a whole complex,” he said.

If the test proves successful, the final plant will be built on the 500 acres across from the demo site. The components will be the same as those in use in the demo plant but, he said, “There will just be a lot more of them.”

The results of the test will determine RER’s path forward with the rare earth mine it has planned in the Bearlodge Mountains near Sundance, which Connett described as, “Probably the richest known reserve in North America.”

“The process itself is going to determine how quickly we move forward on the mine,” he said. “…We’ve already started making some moves on that.”