S1 E25 – Harriet Hageman: Championing Energy Independence

Dustin Olsen (00:00.939)
Hey everyone, this is the Rare Earth Exchanges podcast. You're joined by me, Dustin, my co-host Daniel, and an incredibly special guest, Harriet Hagman from the Wyoming Congress. She's a congresswoman in the house and we're so excited to have her here. Harriet, to get us started, to kick us right off, can you just give us a brief background about some of your history and then how it all led into what you're involved with today?

Harriet Hageman (00:28.889)
Well, thank you for having me. This is a very important topic and one that I think Wyoming is definitely at the forefront and I want to keep it that way. I'm Harriet Hagerman. I'm Wyoming's lone representative in the United States House of Representatives.

I am a Wyoming native. I was born and raised here. The vast majority of my family is still in Wyoming. I grew up on a ranch outside of Fort Laramie, which is about 100 miles north of Cheyenne, a little tiny town of about 300 people. And I still, my family members are farmers and ranchers and still pretty active in the ag industry. I went to Casper College, which is a community college here in Wyoming, on a livestock judging scholarship many, many years ago.

And then I went on to the University of Wyoming where I received both my bachelor's degree and my law degree. Prior to coming to Congress, I practiced law as a trial attorney for 34 years, primarily focusing on water and natural resource issues, representing farmers, ranchers, irrigation districts, municipalities. The state of Wyoming would hire me sometimes, oil and gas companies, really just the producers of the world, I guess you'd say, the people that produce things and grow our food and fiber, that sort of thing.

I also did a lot of constitutional work the last several years of practicing law I actually worked for a public interest law firm out of DC I lived in Wyoming and I would go back every couple of weeks and spend time with the firm there, but we focused on Just regulatory reform in general and what that had to do with is attempting to get back to the constitutional foundation of separation of powers We all know article one is the legislative branch and that's what I am now a part

of being in the US House of Representatives, over the last several decades, our administrative state and the bureaucracy has expanded exponentially and really in many ways undermined not just the foundation of our constitution, but the constitutional rights of our citizens through various regulations that have been adopted, including the 2009 endangerment finding is an example of one of the largest rulemakings in US history, which has had trillions of dollars of impact, I would argue negative impact.

Harriet Hageman (02:41.927)
not with a law being passed by Congress, but a regulation coming out of the EPA. That's the kind of stuff that I was fighting on a constitutional basis at the end of my legal career. And then as you noted in 2022, I was elected to represent the state of Wyoming.

Daniel O'Connor (02:59.532)
I will say you're an American hero. think you've really built an incredible career in law. And then you're giving back now. we're proud of you. And we think it's fantastic. We're both in Utah. we're fairly close. Not too far.

Dustin Olsen (03:14.327)
Thanks.

Harriet Hageman (03:17.207)
a lot of the same issues, the federal lands, the heavy federal footprint, that sort of thing. So yes, Utah and Wyoming are closely aligned.

Daniel O'Connor (03:24.768)
Absolutely. So I want to kick things off with a couple statements. Wyoming is fast becoming a very key player in the United States push to establish independence in the rare earth element supply chain. This is a very big deal as you know. And leading the charge you have Ramico Resources, the Brook Mine near Sheridan. You also have the Hallett Creek Project.

It would be great to hear from your perspective, sort of first a global view of how you see this and how you see Wyoming representing the rare earth, at least upstream mining. We'd like to hear about that, about how you're trying to help these local assets, as well as get into the supply chain and how maybe more things can unfold in Wyoming. So with that.

Harriet Hageman (04:17.349)
So like Utah, we do have an enormous federal footprint. 48 % of our surface estate is owned by the federal government. I believe yours is 63%. And about 63 % or 65 % of our mineral estate is owned by the federal government. So permitting and regulations coming out of a variety of agencies can have a huge and perhaps oversized impact in states like ours because we have to get through the bureaucracy. So you're dealing with NEPA, the Endangered

Species Act, Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act. There are many, many, different federal statutes that are in place, but there's also then the regulatory side of things. And again, that's what I have really focused on, attempting to navigate through on behalf of my clients as a private attorney, but also working at reform of allowing these regulatory agencies, these unelected bureaucrats, to have the outsized power and authority that they do have. You've identified two of the resources that we have here in Wyoming,

and the American Rare Earths Incorporated, the one near Wheatland, Wyoming. I am going to be going to Sheridan tomorrow for the ribbon cutting at the Brook Mine. They are going to begin construction of a processing facility there this fall. This is obviously critically important because as I have said over and over and over again, we do not want to be energy dependent on other countries. We do not want to be food dependent on other countries. We need to be independent in terms of

producing the things that we can here at home here in the United States of America that we need to power our economy that we need to be moving into the you know the next five years the next ten years we've all seen so many changes in our lifetime you know I remember when I was in high school there was a gentleman who came there and he was showing a desktop computer and the thing was enormous you know just this enormous piece of equipment and he was saying someday every household will have one of these and I thought that's crazy first

Dustin Olsen (06:00.246)
So.

Harriet Hageman (06:16.999)
First of all, where would you put it? And second of all, why would we even need something like that? I'm sure that that computer did not have even one tenth or one thousandth of the operating power that this little phone does today. And that's why our economy has changed, the way we do things has changed, and our demands have changed. And rare earth minerals have got to be a part of our entire…

national security debate and discussion as well as just an economic discussion of how we're going to meet the demand for these new types of technology. And that this has to be front and center, how we get the raw materials to be able to build the things that we need to operate and run our economy.

Daniel O'Connor (07:01.61)
Well, and that's really wonderful and completely agree with you. Let us ask you, in terms of permitting and environmental regulations, mean, clearly you're making great progress, you're doing a ribbon cutting. Can you share in Wyoming the journey to get these assets ready or across the finish line? Is it the same process state to state? Does it change? And are there lessons learned?

that you can share others that are watching in other states that may have to deal with the federal bureaucracy.

Harriet Hageman (07:33.573)
So again, that's the challenge that states like ours have is we have to deal not only with the state bureaucracy, but the federal side of things as well. And so again, if these are federal minerals or this is a federal surface estate, we've got to deal with NEPA. You have to deal with Potentially Endangered Species Act issues. We have to deal with the Clean Water Act, depending on where the location is. In terms of any kind of a mining operation we have in Wyoming, we have the Department of Environmental Quality. And so I used to do quite a bit

to work in the gravel space, which is mining as well, a form of mining. But the permitting, the land quality permits associated with that were implemented through the Department of Environmental Quality here in Wyoming, the land quality division. And I mean, when we put those applications together, they were three, four inch, even for small operations, three and four inch binders full of information, everything that you were looking at in relation to wildlife, whether you were

dealing with endangered species or not? You know, is there a wildlife corridor through here? Are we dealing with sage-grouse? Do we have any kind of an endangered species? We had to deal with water. Now the water quality side also was operated through the DEQ, but you also had to do your application for the water quality division as well. So with these vines, you have your federal side, you have your federal statutes and regulatory framework, and then you also have the state side.

So there's an awful lot of work and then depending upon what the value of these particular projects are we in Wyoming have what's called the industrial siding council and the industrial siding council is a separate agency and their board a separate board and what their responsibility is is to look at everything related to a project of how it's going to impact the community that it's coming into. Is there sufficient housing? How are you going to provide the housing for the workers who are coming in either to

to do the mining, to do the processing? Is it a short-term demand? Are you gonna set up man camps? What are the resources available for housing and how much housing do you need? What are the roads? How many roads need to be constructed and who's going to be building them and what happens in terms of reclamation? So it's a very broad spectrum that when we do these projects, I think a lot of people think it's kind of the wild, wild.

Harriet Hageman (09:58.917)
and you can do anything and that's the furthest thing from the truth. We study and look at almost every single metric you can think of when we're in the process of permitting these projects with protecting the environment being absolutely at the top in terms of priorities.

Daniel O'Connor (10:15.731)
Well, I would say this, you know, I've been through Wyoming plenty of times and it's actually, ironically, there's probably more environmentalists there, true environmentalists, because they're about stewardship. It's, your people are living in the land and so they understand, you know, hunting, growing. It's very different than urban environmentalism. I would say that, and also I think you all have learned a lot from your oil or shale gas booms of the past where you had, you know,

huge rushes and there was no housing. I remember hearing those stories, right? So.

Harriet Hageman (10:47.875)
Yes, yes, yes, yes.

And we're the least populated state in the nation. so when you're bringing, when these operations are in particular locations, you don't necessarily have the opportunity of being next to a city like Cheyenne of 60,000 people. And that's our biggest city. A lot of these operations are next to communities of 700 people. And so they may not even have a grocery store. They might have a gas station that also sells milk.

Daniel O'Connor (10:51.911)
Yes.

Daniel O'Connor (11:00.125)
Yeah.

Daniel O'Connor (11:13.361)
Yeah.

Harriet Hageman (11:19.239)
and lunch meat and maybe eggs from somebody local, those sorts of things. So we do have definite challenges in Wyoming. Even in Wheatland, Wheatland's a town of just, I don't know, maybe 5,000 people. So if you're adding 200, 300, 400 jobs in these small communities, it becomes a huge challenge just dealing with the housing and the logistics of meeting that new demand. Now we're up to the task and we want to be able to do it, but in a state like Wyoming,

We definitely pay a lot of attention to what are the resources that are available to meet the needs of the workers who are either going to be coming into those communities or that are being hired locally.

Dustin Olsen (11:56.502)
.

Daniel O'Connor (12:03.653)
Yeah, makes total sense. we have more questions about permitting and I don't think we'll be able to get to it today, but I think you're an incredibly powerful resource for that for others in other states. think it's a very complex entanglement, as you said. In terms of for investors, we have a lot of retail investors, people that are looking at investing in the

the future of American independent energy and mineral infrastructure and that supply chains. Can you talk about processing and what do you see what assets are emerging to both pull assets out of the ground, separate it, but also process it?

Harriet Hageman (12:50.085)
So one of the things that I think is difficult about the rare earth elements is the fact that you have, have to, it is the processing. There is so much product that you have to mine in order to be able to produce the minerals that you're actually seeking. So I just visited a facility up near Upton, Wyoming in the northeastern part of the state. That's another area. That particular project is actually on national forest

Daniel O'Connor (13:07.088)
Yes.

Harriet Hageman (13:20.039)
service lands that they're hoping to move forward with. So we went through how they process those materials, how they bring in the rocks, what they do for crusher. I think my background in working in the gravel industry and then I used to work highway construction when I was in college. I think having that background actually helps me to understand what it is that we're doing. Because yes, we're talking about rare earth minerals that then are broken down and go into fighter jets and into these phones and things, but really it's the same process.

You bring the area, you separate it, you crush it, you crush it again, you get it into smaller particles, and then use a variety of solutions to be able to extract the minerals, the rare earth elements that you're actually seeking. And every one of these operations, to my knowledge, now I'm not an expert on this. You guys are much more of an expert on this. This is just what I'm learning in my role as representing the state of Wyoming. There are different elements within different deposits.

Daniel O'Connor (13:50.0)
Yes.

Harriet Hageman (14:19.981)
So it may be, you know, I can't even say some of the names. You can identify some of the names of the various minerals that are being produced. But we may be producing some things up in the Upton area that is very different than what we can produce in Wheatland, which is very different than what we're producing in Sheridan. The other part of this, and I'm a huge advocate for our coal mines, I think coal is the energy of the future. It is not the energy of the past. It's highly efficient. O'Hanlon is the largest coal producer in the nation. If he were to go to our coal mines,

Daniel O'Connor (14:20.548)
Yes.

Harriet Hageman (14:49.931)
You ought to see the reclamation and the habitat that is created when they are going in and reclaiming the areas that are mined. But they're finding that there are a lot of rare earth minerals in the coal arch. And that's another opportunity for Wyoming that I think is huge.

Daniel O'Connor (15:00.869)
That's right. Yep.

Daniel O'Connor (15:05.702)
It's huge. Now let's talk. There's a huge gap. Now you're right. What the Chinese have done, they have perfected these separation and processing, processes, methods and technologies over the last 30 years. And so we have a lot to do to catch up. Now you probably heard about the MP Department of Defense deal this morning. It's a big deal. The Pentagon has announced they're going to take a 15 % interest in that mine in California. So that's a big deal, right?

Dustin Olsen (15:27.858)
you

Harriet Hageman (15:35.407)
Yes, it is.

Daniel O'Connor (15:35.558)
Big money is going to be coming. It has to. We have no choice. There are times when you want to spend money, and this is one of them. Now, let's talk about labor force. It's critical. We don't have nearly enough of it. We need to train people. We've been pushing very strong for industrial policy. It's not the sexiest topic in Washington, DC, frankly.

Perry, can you want to talk about developing a workforce in Wyoming through education? Do you have any ideas about how to encourage and facilitate that?

Harriet Hageman (16:14.425)
Yes.

So I've been a strong advocate for the trades for many, many, many years. And in part, I suppose that stems from going to a community college where I think our community colleges have been more successful at focusing on trades, especially those trades that are specifically specific to their community. So in Southwestern Wyoming, we have the Trona mines and Trona is what is that's baking soda is what goes into flat glass. Wyoming is one of the top producers in the entire world. Our primary competitors

are China and I believe it's Uzbekistan, but they do more synthetics. Ours is the highest quality trona, but there's a program at Western Wyoming Community College in mining for trona. You can come out of Western Wyoming Community College and make 80,000 plus a year going into the mines. So they have worked with the mines out there to create a program specific to what they need for the people coming into those mines. And we have multiple generations

Daniel O'Connor (17:06.148)
Amazing.

Harriet Hageman (17:16.415)
moms and dads and sons and daughters who work in those mines and that community college has created a program. I have advocated for that with all of our community colleges and talked about, okay, what is it that you need in this community? How can we do better at training for the trades rather than going to the University of Wyoming but focusing on those two to three year programs that we can get that skilled workforce in Sheridan? There's a community college in Sheridan. That's something that they ought to be focusing on.

Dustin Olsen (17:43.028)
Okay.

Harriet Hageman (17:46.167)
We're setting up a new community college in Gillette, Wyoming. Obviously very, very focused on the trades, on the welding and on the metal work and diesel engines and those sorts of things. I'm an advocate for that. I may have gone through college and had a fairly traditional background and then become an attorney. I think that the future of education in this country really needs to focus on educating people to work with their hands and produce what we need to produce.

Daniel O'Connor (18:16.003)
100 percent. And it sounds like you're very open to that. And maybe on that topic we can keep in touch. But we want to start connecting different community colleges, for example, as curricula emerges. We want to be able to socialize it and propagate it around the country. It's part of our mission. We know it needs to happen. So it sounds like you're open to that. Beautiful.

Harriet Hageman (18:36.837)
Absolutely.

Daniel O'Connor (18:39.074)
Now, I want to go back to environment for a second. With some rare earths, there is some radioactive material that can be involved. don't know if it's… We haven't done the research on whether that's going to be an issue in Wyoming, but do you see that? mean, there's clearly protocols to employ with that as well, but is that something that's come up or…

And is it manageable? How much more effort is that?

Harriet Hageman (19:11.319)
It did come up. It came up when I was touring the Upted facility. There was discussion about that. And Wyoming has very high uranium reserves as well. And we're starting to see more interest being paid, obviously, to constructing nuclear power plants. And that's obviously going to, that all of this dovetails together. And we need to obviously be incredibly careful of how we handle these materials. But we know an awful lot more now than we did 40 and 50

Daniel O'Connor (19:29.015)
Yeah.

Harriet Hageman (19:41.225)
years ago. And I don't know if you are aware, but in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the RECA program has been extended. It's been extended for additional years. That's the radiation compensation fund to provide medical care for our miners that were in the uranium industry prior to the adoption of the creation of OSHA and those kinds of workplace safety agencies. And so what RECA is doing, and it's important here in Wyoming because we were mining uranium

they didn't really take care of the way that they should have with some of that. And so we have some very serious medical consequences as a result. So in RECA, that program has now been extended, again, both time-wise as well as to a larger group of people who were affected by that. Again, it goes back to the fact that we know more now than we did before. And as a result, we need to make sure that we are handling these materials in the safest way possible.

Daniel O'Connor (20:40.385)
No, it makes complete sense. Another, you you mentioned the Big Beautiful bill. I think this is very important question. There are, we have done some analysis. We're going to do more. There are provisions and some monies in there to help with some of these activities. So it's a good direction. Do you have any, any opinion or shine any light on any aspects of the Big Beautiful bill that

know, folks that are either investors or mine or processors or even magnet manufacturers can want to think about it. Have you thought about how that bill can help Wyoming even further? Then I want to get into indigenous communities just for a minute because that's important as well.

Harriet Hageman (21:25.445)
So what I would say about the one big beautiful bill, and it's partly in the bill, but it's also in a complete change of philosophy. So I indicated a moment ago that I've been a strong advocate for our coal industry and our oil and gas and our uranium and our Trona industries for decades and decades because that's really what powers our economy and has created the prosperity that we've had. My mother is 101 years old. She's gonna be 102 this year. And I think about how her life has changed over the last 100

years and really the advances that we have made are unrivaled in human history and it is because of the commercial production of affordable energy. It's just really that simple. Our prosperity is based upon it. Yet for the last several decades, especially among the Democrats, and I'm going to be partisan because it's the reality, there has been this attitude of scarcity is the appropriate way to go. The way I describe it is they want to be lords of scarcity. I want to be a champion of abundance.

And this whole mindset that you see from the Greta Thunbergs of the world and global warming, we're all going to die this horrible death and everything's melting around us and we're blowing up the world. All of that is nonsense, number one, but it also has created the mentality for literally decades in Washington, DC of trying to all advancements, block human advancements. And I think that what has happened since January especially, and even with the advent of AI, I think people are

are now recognizing, even if they're on the left, think that they are recognizing we must have affordable, reliable energy. It's just that simple. We've got to get away from this nonsense of the net zero or the carbon negative and the carbon neutral. We're watching Europe is deindustrialized. Europe is destroying itself from within. We can't go down that road. So when you look at the bill, when you look at Trump's executive orders, when you look at the announcements that he has made, we are

Daniel O'Connor (23:10.015)
Right. Yeah.

Daniel O'Connor (23:14.069)
Yeah.

Harriet Hageman (23:25.125)
moving in an era of recognizing that our prosperity, the prosperity of our future generations is dependent upon our ability to safely produce and manage these resources that we have. And I just think it's an entirely different attitude. And I look at where we're heading economically, financially, security-wise, and I think that really the sky is just the limit.

Daniel O'Connor (23:49.974)
Well, I'm enthusiastic. I mean, totally agree with what you're saying. It makes sense. there has been a lot of containment of progress, and we can't have that. What about the, are there any implications for, because this comes up, and especially in the West, is there any indigenous communities that touch on some of these assets? And are there any issues, or has there been a compromise? Or could you share a little bit about that?

Harriet Hageman (24:18.863)
So my first term in Congress, I was the chairman of the subcommittee on Indian and insular affairs. And so I've dealt a lot with Indian issues throughout the country, all 574 federally recognized tribes. We have two tribes here in Wyoming on one reservation. We're the only state in the nation. We have the Wind River Reservation and we have the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone. Wonderful people. And what I'd like to see is a lot more economic development for our tribal members. Just so you know, the Navajo

Daniel O'Connor (24:45.867)
Yeah. Yeah.

Harriet Hageman (24:48.807)
is owns one of the largest coal mines in the state of Wyoming. The Navajo. Yeah.

Daniel O'Connor (24:53.163)
That's interesting. Interest. The Navajo?

Harriet Hageman (24:55.449)
than Ava Ho and they've been quite aggressive at oil and gas development. I was extremely disappointed in Dabahayland, the previous head of the Department of Interior. First of all, she didn't know what she was doing, but she was incredibly aggressive at opposing the development by our tribes of energy resources. You know, she was a radical climate nut. so everything that she did, she did a lot of damage to our tribal members and because of her attitude.

Daniel O'Connor (25:06.506)
Right.

Daniel O'Connor (25:22.334)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Harriet Hageman (25:25.583)
But yes, I think that these things that you're talking about are huge opportunities for our tribal members and for our native community as well.

Daniel O'Connor (25:34.24)
And just on that note, it's fascinating Harriet, because a lot of the world is going towards quote unquote green energy, windmills and solar. It's not sustained. I I don't see a path. So I totally get it. I agree with you. I don't see a pathway. I don't see any kind of sustainability that direction for 50 years. So it's really.

Dustin Olsen (25:53.714)
you

Harriet Hageman (25:56.239)
That's right.

That's why what we did in the one big beautiful bill act, I would have liked to have seen these tax credits and subsidies go away more quickly. The Senate extended some of them, but at least we do see the light at the end of the tunnel. The solar industry, the wind industry, a lot of people say I'm for all of the above. That is, for me, that slang for saying I believe it when they talk about the fact that it's global warming and climate change is gonna destroy everything.

because I don't believe that. First of all, adaptation is what we've done throughout history. Number one, and number two, my beautiful state is being turned into an industrial zone with these enormous windmills being put across pastures and farm ground and the solar farms, and they're not green. The fact is that there's an enormous amount of waste. The only way that you can run windmills in a state like Wyoming, as compared to Texas, is they have to have them attached to oil because otherwise they

Daniel O'Connor (26:55.572)
Hmm.

Harriet Hageman (26:57.415)
Freeze a couple of years ago when they had that terrible ice storm down in Texas the reason that their windmills froze up is because they didn't they didn't lubricate They didn't have what them attached to oil they weren't running them with oil ours do that's why they don't freeze there at 8,000 feet They don't freeze they don't freeze because they fill them with oil So, you know people don't even really understand how they operate but it's only through the tax credits and the subsidies that they are viable But I'm gonna I'm just gonna give you one example. I was standing on

Daniel O'Connor (27:15.488)
Wow.

Harriet Hageman (27:27.375)
on the ninth floor of outside at a coal-fired power plant near Colorado Springs about a month ago. And I looked across the highway and I saw a solar field. And so I asked the manager, said, what's your footprint here? How big is this place? he said, and I said, it looks to be about 300 acres. And he said, yeah, that's pretty close. I said, how big is the solar farm? And he said, 1,500 acres. I said, what's your efficiency here? He said, 82 to 85%. I said, what's the efficiency over there? He said, 22%. I said, how much do you produce

Daniel O'Connor (27:55.719)
Wow.

Harriet Hageman (27:57.207)
here and he said 200 and I said what is it what do they produce and he said 150. Now what's interesting you could quadruple the size of that solar farm but it's not going to be at 82 percent efficient it's still going to be at 22 percent efficient. Whereas if you quadrupled if you built four more coal-fired power plants you'd have 800 you know you'd be producing 800 megawatts not 200.

Daniel O'Connor (28:11.231)
That's right.

Daniel O'Connor (28:25.107)
Well, and you know, yeah, sorry, keep.

Harriet Hageman (28:26.115)
Those efficiencies alone tell us that you cannot spend the money on solar and wind that we're spending. is not efficient. It is not a good use of money. You have to look at efficiency. And the other thing we have to look at is unit of land necessary per unit of energy produced.

Daniel O'Connor (28:47.913)
Yes. And on that note, just quickly, digression, important, AI is going to require enormous amounts of energy. We're probably going to need mini-nuclear or something. mean, it's just beyond what I can even think about right now. Important question. We're getting close to the end. Very important one. I'm hogging up all the… This is so fascinating. I would vote for you again. And I'm not even in your state. So, real quickly, this is important, Harriet. We have seen…

Harriet Hageman (28:58.01)
Yeah.

Dustin Olsen (29:13.276)
Thanks.

Daniel O'Connor (29:17.01)
We're starting to see Washington change when it comes to rare earths. We understand the power that China has. They have enormous power right now. You saw when they started to hold back on the exports and there's a lot that was not said. How serious is Congress taking this now? You clearly do. But let's talk about the rest of them. Do they know what's going on?

Harriet Hageman (29:42.511)
Some more than others.

But I also think even the people who don't have as much information because they're not affected by it as much as I am and my state is, they understand that we need these minerals because they also are vying for the data centers. They're also vying for the jobs in their communities. They also recognize that what we do with this and our fighter jets and all of those things are dependent on things such as rare earth. They also are, I think, understanding more about why we need to have affordable and reliable energy. So even those folks

whose states are not as directly impacted as ours are, they're the lingo and they're saying the words and they are advocating for and they are heralding the executive orders coming out from President Trump. And they did vote for these things in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. So I guess what I'm going to say is I think that there's a lot more knowledge now than there was five and ten years ago. And I think it's a matter of educating people in Congress, but it's also a matter

of educating the general public. of the problem, part of why I think we went so far off the rails, why Europe has gone so far off the rails, is their prosperity really kind of shielded them from the consequences of their bad decisions for a period of time and that it didn't. You can only destroy the things that makes your life really good for so long before your life becomes really bad. And I don't mean to say stupid statements, but the

Dustin Olsen (30:44.661)
Okay.

Daniel O'Connor (31:03.154)
Yeah.

Harriet Hageman (31:13.671)
They thought that they could continue with the same standard of living, all of the same things in place, while destroying the engine of their economy. They're not going to be manufacturing cars in Germany anymore. BMW, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, three of the most iconic brands in the history of automobiles from Germany, three of the very best automobiles you can buy, and they're not going to be able to manufacture them because they have destroyed their industrial base by destroying their

their energy base. Okay, they put really bad people in charge for too long. We can't go down the same road and I think that they are, guess what I'd say is, we learned a lesson from them and fortunately we're changing course.

Daniel O'Connor (32:01.04)
Yeah, no, really, really all sounds very, very commonsensical and powerfully delivered. Dustin, any final thoughts?

Dustin Olsen (32:11.06)
Yeah, I to kind of summarize some of this and put it all into perspective, I just have a couple questions. So there's a lot that goes into preparing for the infrastructure required to mine the resources that we need and have people to

staff those facilities, right? One question and something that we're trying to broadcast is the time it takes to get ready for a mining facility to come online or a production facility to come online. What does the runway look like in just getting ready? You already say there's a lot of complexity. There's roads, there's the environment, there's the people, there's the housing, right? How much time is required to even be ready to start

to bring like a mining facility online.

Harriet Hageman (33:02.127)
So.

I think that it is going to depend and I will know more tomorrow. The Ramico, I'm just looking at some of my notes here about Ramico. They began large scale mining in June of this year and they're gonna begin construction of the processing facility this fall. Their initial production is expected in 2026, large scale production in the second half of 2028 and the total rare earth oxide at the site could be

as much as 1.7 million tons. That is just one of our facilities in Wyoming that is going online tomorrow. I believe that this is the first one.

And so you're talking about a couple of years. They've been working on this for a while. But again, with the new administration, I think they've worked really hard to streamline some of it. And keep in mind, this was an existing facility. So this is a coal mine. Part of this was they had a mining permit. So they've got some of that permitting. They already had some of it in place. I think that makes a huge difference with being able to move forward with this as quickly as they did. But we're also going to learn over time. And I think that that's

that I wish some of our bureaucrats would recognize is that we're actually very, very, very good at doing this. You know, I can liken it to a gravel operation again, which is I think in some ways a simple way of looking at it. We're just crushing rock. And then you have the solution aspect of it, the chemical aspect of it, but that's not done out on the ground.

Harriet Hageman (34:36.537)
That's done in a facility that's very well controlled and monitored and has all of the latest technology available to make sure that we're doing it the right way.

Dustin Olsen (34:46.516)
That's great.

I think we're all accustomed to instant gratification. to hear that we're still a year, two, three years down the road before we start actually seeing the production that we need. I think it's a good perspective. One final question I have is you, there's a lot of emphasis on trade schools and training people with specific skills that are needed in Wyoming. Is there interest?

in those trade schools. Is there people wanting to learn this stuff or is it just I have no other choice?

Harriet Hageman (35:21.743)
No, I think people are very interested. So when I go into communities, one of the things I always like to do is go to the community colleges as well as the various trade schools that may be private. So we have what's called WIO Tech over in Laramie. Now that's mostly for automobiles and trucks and tractors. John Deere, for example, has a partnership with WIO Tech and pretty much take all of their graduates directly off the floor when they graduate.

I believe it's up and running a 24-hour welding school. run three shifts, eight hours each of welding school over there. We have a welding school up near Gillette that's a fabulous private school. The come from all over the United States and then leave and go all over the United States to work. Our community college in Gillette, I've been through their tech program and I mean it's everything from the diesel mechanics as I said, to the welding, to pipe fitting, to

plumbing to electrical to all of those things. So I want to see more people. I think what we need to do, I think we need to be going into the high schools. That's where we need to be recruiting kids so that they understand that a typical four year education isn't necessarily what they need. They can go into an apprenticeship, they can go into an electric, go learn about being an electrician, do an apprenticeship. They can be out there making $100,000 within a very short period.

of time. We're desperate for electricians. We're desperate for pipe fitters. We're desperate for the skilled trades. And we need to be going in and being more aggressive in our high schools, channeling both girls and boys into these tech programs.

Dustin Olsen (37:08.549)
That's great. We totally agree. And something we've talked about here on our podcast, but, I think we'll, we'll wrap it up here. Harriet, thank you so much. Honestly, this conversation has given me more optimism for the future and the direction we're heading, especially if we have leaders like you, a part of our government. I still a bit more at ease with where we could go and the potential that's out there. So thank you again for joining us.

Daniel O'Connor (37:08.602)
100%.

Harriet Hageman (37:38.373)
Thank you for having me. Thank you.

Daniel O'Connor (37:39.162)
Thank you, Harriet.