American Resource Corporation is run by Mark Jensen, who doesn’t have the best reputation in the coal industry. What he does have is chromatography technology that extracts rare earths from waste tailings. And now he has a US government tailwind to go with his tailings.
The Trump administration launched a new effort to extract valuable critical minerals, including rare earths, from mine waste and abandoned sites.
Rare earth elements, crucial for advanced technologies used in hard drives, electric vehicles, and military applications, have been detected in clay found in coal deposits across the Appalachian and Illinois basins, as reported by the West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey.
AREC is the controlling shareholder of ReElement Technologies. They’re looking to commercialize chromatography technology “engineered and calibrated to be a smaller, faster, and lower-cost than conventional refining technologies.” ReElement is one of three companies spun out of AREC that own the chromatography technology and the waste tailings at coal seams in the Appalachian and Illinois basins.
The corporate structure is complicated. The technology is unproven. But it’s on the watchlist as government policy would be nitrous feed for AREC if it and its spinoffs can extract and sell rare earth product at scale.
