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I want to start a mining operation and I need help figuring out what the best way to get off the ground is with limited starting capital and only a modicum of technical know-how.
Normally, this would be a pie-in-the-sky nonsense dream, but I have an unusual set of circumstances. I have inherited a 400-acre mountain property which was the site of an old mine about 100 years ago. That mine was started by my great^4 grandfather, but it died in the fuel-rationing of the World Wars.
My father attempted to start a new operation, but a lack of business-acumen, determination, and time prevented him from doing so.
The property itself is loaded. The 20th century operation was attempting to mine copper, not realizing the immense mineral wealth they were casting aside as refuse. Of particular interest to me are two things:
There is a particular mineral vein (about a 100ish feet wide, around 1000 deep) that tests show containing several ounces per ton of gold, an obscenely dense amount. However, this gold is AuO2, or gold oxide. I’d you’re thinking “gold doesn’t oxidize!” you would be mostly right. AuO2 has been made in labs, but I can’t find much info on it. A PhD student from a local college went and did a paper about it, but had few answers. No idea if it complicates extraction at all.
There is another deposit that tests show as containing around a half an ounce per ton of Rubidium. For those who don’t know, rubidium is a rare-earth metal used in many electronics which the US is currently 100% reliant on imports from China for. It is worth somewhere in the ballpark of $100 per gram.
It’s definitely an opportunity, but getting off the ground will be difficult with me having no idea what I’m doing. My circumstances are as follows:
Bank loans are usable, but the property must never be used as collateral.
I currently make $45,000/year in a low COL area, and don’t pay rent as I live in an RV on the property. I work 45 hours/week
I have a friend who inherited a fortune and is willing to bankroll me effectively for free but only if I have clear, well defined checkpoints and goals.
I need help figuring out where to start. I messed around with acid leaching in high school, and I’ve looked into making an arc-welder furnace, but I’m somewhat lost as to what the extraction process should even look like, or where I should start. I’m just rather scattered.
If anyone here can help, I’d greatly appreciate it. If there’s any interest, I can post mineral tests.
I regret to inform you, it is a pie-in-the-sky nonsense dream. To succeed in a field as complex as mining, you need both a deep understanding of all of the technical and legal issues, and a shit load of capital. The fact that you are even posing this question to some internet strangers shows you are really out of your depth. I dont say this to be insulting, but to save you from throwing your money into a literal pit, then metaphorically setting it on fire. If you don't have, or know someone willing to be employed by you, an advanced degree in mining engineering, you have no way of even properly estimating the technical hurdles and therefore financials of your proposed mine. Without that baseline, any business plan you make is constructed on a foundation of sand.
Fortunately, there is a much easier path forward, which has the potential to be extremely lucrative both in the short term, and going forward: explore leasing out the mineral rights to an established mineral extraction firm. There are plenty of lawyers who specialize in this type of deal, I would suggest contracting one (or several) and see what sort of deal they would recommend.
It’s a fair point, and I fully understand why this is the majority of the responses I’m receiving, but I hold out hope primarily due to the sheer absurdity of the mineral richness of the property. No gold mine on earth has tests on the order of several oz/ton across a wide area, and rare-earths are typically so dispersed that they’re usually measured in ppm or tons/oz rather than oz/ton.
If a degree in mineral engineering is what I need then I suppose I’ll set out to get one; I just hoped that since mining predates degrees by several thousand years that I could make do without.
I think perhaps I didn’t get across the perspective well enough in my top-level post. Most mining today is basically scraping the barrel. We spent the last few thousand years taking the easy stuff, and now we have to try really hard to get the rest. I have a cache of the easy stuff that has been hitherto passed-over.
To use oil as an analogy, this property isn’t ‘we need advanced fracking techniques to access the oil reserve a mile underground.” It’s “I stuck a shovel in the ground and oil started shooting out.”
I don’t expect it to be easy, but I do think it’s at a level that’s attainable, even if it takes me the better part of a decade of hard work.
If it is actually true, on a practical level, that your property has a higher gold density than any other "gold mine on earth" then you should be able to negotiate a lease deal that is very lucrative for you. Actually trying to extract and market the minerals yourself without experience sounds like a great way to go bankrupt. In my limited understanding when it comes to mining in the United States finding good deposits is not the hard part. The hard part is getting it out without the EPA fining you into oblivion.
Look at Pebble Mine, as a for-instance. Second largest copper deposit in the world, and by far the largest deposit that hasn't been mined. If fully extracted would come out to "56.9 billion pounds of copper, 70.6 million troy ounces of gold, 3.4 billion pounds of molybdenum and 344 million ounces of silver." A multinational trust of mining conglomerates came together to attempt to develop it. They've been working since 2010 to get all the approvals and permits they need, and they still haven't got them. They've sunk tens of millions into feasibility studies, permit applications, and ongoing litigation with the EPA and US Army Corps of Engineers. 12 years of haggling, and it's still unsure if any mine will ever be approved.
Now, admittedly, Pebble mine is enormous and sits in the middle of prime salmon watershed. I'm not saying mining your deposit would be as difficult. However, it will likely take millions of dollars and years of work just to get the permits needed to start mining. You do not need that headache. You do not need that risk. Investigate leasing it out first, get some offers, and then consider whether you want to go it alone.
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