American Rare Earths’ Cowboy State mine: resource upgrade and PFS lens for engineers
Written by Joe Ashwell
First reported on MINING.com(American Rare Earths boosts resource estimate for Cowboy State mine)
30 Second Briefing
American Rare Earths has lifted the Cowboy State mine resource within the Halleck Creek project in Wyoming to about 547.5 million tonnes at a 1,000 ppm TREO cut-off, following 18 new channel samples and expanded geological mapping. Around 63.9 million tonnes have been upgraded from inferred to indicated, and two new Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality permits allow 27 in-fill drill holes to support prefeasibility and subsequent technical studies. The project also benefits from up to $7.1 million in state-backed, non-dilutive funding to advance mine development.
Technical Brief
- Additional geological mapping tied to the channel sampling expanded the defined mineralised footprint, adding ~4.5 Mt to the Cowboy State mine resource without additional drilling.
- For other rare earth developers, the use of relatively low-cost channel sampling and mapping to both upgrade classification and expand tonnage illustrates the value of detailed surface work before committing to large in-fill drill budgets.
Our Take
American Rare Earths is one of only a handful of rare earths and rare earth oxides names in our recent mining coverage, which suggests Cowboy State in Wyoming could become a reference project for US-based critical minerals outside the more commonly reported Canadian and Australian hubs.
The combination of a 547.5 Mt resource at Cowboy State and state-backed non‑dilutive funding in Wyoming positions ARR differently from many junior rare earths developers in our database, which more often rely on equity raises or strategic offtake to fund early drilling and scoping work.
With ARR targeting antimony capacity by 2028 alongside rare earth oxides, the company is aligning two US‑listed critical minerals that feature far less frequently than copper or gold in our mining corpus, potentially making Halleck Creek and any South Australia processing facility more attractive to downstream buyers seeking diversified non‑Chinese supply.
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