Ramaco CEO Response to PRBRC

Below is response to the recent Powder River Basin Resource Council’s opposition to the Brook Mine Application from Ramaco CEO Randall Atkins:

Ramaco wants to showcase Sheridan as the “Carbon Valley” for a new higher tech future for one of our State’s oldest, most valuable and abundant natural resources- coal. We have worked to create an opportunity for a new chapter for Wyoming. Indeed, we hope also one for the coal industry. It’s called “Coal to Products”.  Ramaco is proud to have invested in Wyoming for almost ten years to try and make this a reality. We are close.

Since 2011, both our employees, and the countless local vendors and professionals we have employed, have been dedicated to improving the Sheridan community and the State.  

Our Brook mine may be small by Wyoming’s past standards. But it is unique.

It is the first step in the only vertically integrated coal tech project designed to produce the feedstock for coal-to-product research, development and manufacturing of advanced carbon products and materials.

Our iCAM, carbon advanced materials research center, now under construction, will also be the nation’s first private research facility dedicated to trying to repurpose the coal industry to a higher tech, higher value proposition.

We are indeed trying to “Surf Wyoming”.

Our Brook mine permit has now been over eight years in the making. It has been reviewed, re-reviewed and opined on by the State of Wyoming’s own mining experts at the DEQ.

These experts are people who live and work here. They have reviewed coal mining permits for a living for decades. Their careers are in mine engineering, vegetation, wildlife, history, geology, hydrology, and mine reclamation. They are tasked to help the State judge that someone who taps the State’s resources does so in compliance with the law.  

After eight years they have said this permit is more than ready.

The “organizers” of voices in opposition disagree. They want the State to fail to have an energy or extractive resource economy. They also do not seem to care that without that resource-based economy there is no easy way to pay for the public services upon which Wyoming families now depend. New investment, new manufacturing and new mining pays Wyoming’s bills.  

Ramaco is dedicated to moving the Wyoming energy economy forward in coal mining, coal research and advanced carbon manufacturing. We want to start at a time when Wyoming now needs it most.  We look forward to working with Sheridan to make that brighter future happen.