Ann: Drilling to commence at Halleck Creek, page-23

Clever, how they don’t identify who had to approve the next 23 holes and who will have to approve any later efforts. That would be the federal government Bureau of Land Management, and perhaps the Wyoming state mining regulators also.

BLM will assume that a small number of holes, with less than five acres (two hectares) of disturbance, has no significant impact. More than that, a study has to be done and public comments allowed. My other favorite Australian company with claims on Arizona critical minerals, AZL, has been waiting more than two years for a decision on its application for drilling. (It has problems with native population, which I don’t see in Wyoming, and with ranchers, who may be present.)

In Wyoming, surface rights and subsurface rights often have separate ownership. BLM does not own the surface rights to all of the claims, because the company admits (Page 13) that there are private owners. Who are they? How do they feel about drilling holes all over their property? Stay tuned.

The new CEO says ARR is “the logical solution for the US Government to reduce dependency on Chinese rare earths.” The problem with this is that the US Government does not buy any rare earths, nor maintain a critical stockpile of them (except uranium). It buys products containing rare earths from suppliers that acquire them from around the world. A minuscule amount of REE production ends up in the defense industry, but most are in Apple phones and Tesla vehicles sourced wherever those companies decide to buy them. That's where they cost the least, and the US government isn't going to subsidize them because they also sell worldwide. The best it can do is offer tax credits to those who buy local -- but that ends up in violation of trade agreements.