TRER Releases Details on New, Lower-Volume Mine Plan
Texas Rare Earth Resources released details this week about a new “lower-volume” plan for its proposed mine at Round Top Mountain. Compared to earlier models, the mine described in the new plan would be far smaller and far less costly to launch – though the company said the operation could be expanded over time.
TRER board members will be discussing the project at an event in El Paso, Monday (Sept. 15), which is open to the public. The talk will be held at Sanders/Wingo Advertising, in the ninth floor conference room of the Wells Fargo Building, at 201 N. Kansas. The hour-long presentation begins at noon, and attendees are asked to arrive by 11:45 a.m. Refreshments will be served, and people planning to attend the meeting should contact board Chair Anthony Marchese in advance, at [email protected]. Speakers will include Dr. Nick Pingitore, UTEP geology professor and TRER board member.
In a press release Monday (Sept. 8), TRER said that the lower-volume operation would cost $60-90 million to build and would mine between 2,500 and 3,500 tons of ore a day at Round Top. In the most recent previous plan for the mine, publicized in December 2013, TRER planned to mine about 20,000 tons of ore a day – and capital expenditure was estimated at about $300 million.
Under the new plan, the Round Top mine would produce between 350 and 450 tons of rare earth elements a year. To extract rare earths, raw ore from Round Top would be submitted to “heap leaching” – soaked in a sulfuric-acid solution – near the mountain, and “tailings” or waste material would be disposed of on-site.
TRER officials said in the press release that by pulling back on the scale of the mine, the company could proportionally reduce expenditures in a range of areas, including infrastructure and equipment expenses and the cost of managing the acid solution. The company said that pursuing a smaller operation would also mean a smaller “environmental footprint” and could cut back on the wait times for securing permits.
TRER, like other new rare earth proposals, and new mining projects more generally, has had a hard time finding investment to fund its plans. But TRER says that Round Top is a unique deposit, and company officials say that Hudspeth County’s temperate climate, and Round Top’s proximity to El Paso and to highway and rail infrastructure, make the project more attractive than emerging rare earth operations in more remote areas.
The amount of rock TRER now plans to quarry daily is comparable to the amount quarried by RCL Rocks on Sierra Blanca Mountain. RCL Rocks mines, crushes and screens 3,000-5,000 tons of rock a day for use by Union Pacific as railroad ballast.
TRER began exploratory drilling on Round Top, a 5,700-foot formation about 8 miles west of Sierra Blanca, in 2011. But efforts to begin mining have stalled since then. The new plan represents a second scaling-back of the scope of the proposal; in its first “preliminary economic assessment,” released in the summer of 2012, TRER planned a $2-billion operation that would mine 80,000 tons of rock a day.
Rare earth elements are a class of heavy metals that are essential for many electronic devices – from consumer electronics like laptops and iPhones, to many military applications. Almost all of the world’s rare earths are produced in China, and, given the defense implications, TRER and other rare-earth operators say that developing domestic source of the metals will ultimately become a national-security necessity.
A Round Top mine would be an open-pit operation, likely beginning on the northwest side of the mountain. Rare earths exist in low concentrations at Round Top, but are spread throughout the mountain’s volcanic rock. The rare earths exist in proximity to the radioactive elements uranium and thorium, and the heap-leaching process would concentrate those elements as well as the rare earths. Containing or disposing of those elements would be one challenge of a Round Top mine, and the health and environmental risks of the radioactive material is an issue that has raised concern among some local residents.