American Rare Earths Ltd (ASX:ARR, OTCQB:ARRNF) has unveiled promising soil sampling results from the Cowboy State Mine area of the Halleck Creek rare earth elements project in Wyoming, the United States.
The company believes the samples demonstrate the potential for a larger, higher-grade rare earth element (REE) deposit near those it has already established, complementing its recently announced scoping study at the project.
CEO Donald Swartz joined Proactive to discuss the soil sampling results.
Proactive: Tell me about this soil sampling you’ve done.
DS: The context matters. So, about a month ago, we started a scoping study of what we’re calling the Cowboy State Mine at the Halleck Creek project in Wyoming. It was concentrated around this idea of expedited permitting on state land, something that could be done quickly and one of the few projects that can be brought online in a relatively short amount of time. So, what we had the geologists do is spend a lot of time trying to do the field mapping where you can identify the areas where mineralization is and how the mine plan might come together.
So, with that background, we’re very pleased with the results that we saw from the sampling of up to 6,000 parts per million total rare earth oxide (TREO). With a 10x upgrade, that’s 6% with the kind of metallurgy that we put out. Really encouraging results.
It’s all data that you need to make decisions to de-risk the project, correct?
We’re very optimistic about the resource potential, particularly in this area with some drilling that we’re planning and starting to work with the Board on next year’s budget.
What about expanding the rare earths there?
This allows us to go out and target some higher-grade resource and those actions can still be permitted pretty darn quickly.
Quotes have been edited for clarity and style