(soft upbeat music) - Wyoming has the country's largest deposits of trona and after processing supplies about 90% of the country's soda ash.

In fact Sweetwater County mines more than 17 million tons of trona annually, making trona Wyoming's top export and trona mining employs over 3000 people in Southwest Wyoming directly.

Trona mining next on Wyoming Chronicle.

(soft upbeat music playing) - [Narrator] Funding for this program is made possible in part by the Wyoming Humanities Council, helping Wyoming take a closer look at life through the humanities.

thinkWY.org And by the members of the Wyoming PBS Foundation.

Thank you for your support.

- And as we begin this Wyoming Chronicle, it's my pleasure to be joined by Craig Rood.

Craig is the director of government affairs and public relations for Ciner Wyoming.

Craig, welcome to Wyoming Chronicle.

- Well, thanks for coming to see us.

- We are 850 feet below the surface here in the Big Island Mine of Ciner Wyoming.

We're in a trona mine.

- Yeah, we're underground.

We've got a lot of tunnels here and you're standing in the largest bed of trona in the world.

- So Big Island.

How did it get the name?

- Big island.

There's actually the Green River flows very close to our plant.

And it is about a mile north of the plant.

There's an island where the Green River separates and flows around the island.

And somewhere back in history, we sort of adopted the name of The Big Island Mine and Refinery.

- Craig, I think many people in Wyoming when they think about Wyoming mining and things all about that, they think about coal and they think about oil and think about gas.

Maybe they forget about trona.

Let's start at the beginning with trona.

What is trona?

- Yeah, so trona is a sodium based mineral that was deposited in this area 50 million years ago, there was a large sodium base lake that deposited the mineral here.

It is the largest trona reserve in the world with billions of tons of trona here in Southwest Wyoming.

- And what is it about the geology that made that So.

- Well, I, I think it was just the prehistoric lake.

You know, it, it was here and it deposited the sodium in the, in the bottom of the lake, when the climate changed and the lake actually dried up and over the 50 million years has evolved into trona.

- This mine has a history in Wyoming that dates back to the 1960s.

- 1960 was when we started up 1962 was actually our groundbreaking, but trona was discovered in Southwest Wyoming in the 40s when they were looking for natural gas and they were doing core samples, looking for natural gas and they found trona.

And over the years, there's four mines here in the area.

We have three competitors and we started up in 1962.

- Tell me about Ciner, how many people are employed here.

- So Ciner Wyoming, which is our facility here has about 430 full-time employees.

We also employ several contractors at various times for maintenance, shutdowns and things like that.

But 430 here and then 50 employees at our corporate office in Atlanta.

- And your mothership, so to speak is in Turkey.

- Yes.

So the Ciner Group is, is in Istanbul, Turkey.

We have two natural soda ash mines in Turkey, which a lot of people don't know that either.

And they do what's called solution mining different than what we do here, which is conventional mining.

So, but Ciner a very diverse group.

We started out in mining and energy.

And now we have things like railroads and cargo ships and about 10,000 employees in Turkey.

- There are some things that make the Big Island Mine somewhat unique.

This is not as deep as other mines in Wyoming.

- Right, there's several trona beds, 25 different trona beds.

And they range from 2000 feet up to 800 feet.

And we are unique in that we have two beds of trona under Ciner Wyoming and we have one at 850 feet, one at 800 feet.

A little less stability issues than some of our competitors.

A little bit different trona based on the way that it settled out.

And we think it gives us, you know, advantage in our mining techniques.

- It's a different quality of Trona, maybe higher quality of trona.

- A little bit different, different impurities at the different levels.

And we feel that ours is a little easier to process.

- You use a technique called room and pillar mining.

What is that?

- Correct.

So, room and pillar mining, if you think about how a city's laid out in big squares, that's how room and pillar mining works.

And we actually have surveyors and geologists that help us lay out the mining, and we leave approximately 50% of the mineral to support the roof and make sure that we don't have any subsidence.

- So there is a lot of trona that's here.

How long can you mine right here?

- So this current facility has a mine life of about 70 years left with current mining techniques.

Then if you think about what I just said of the 50% that we left behind in 70 years, someone will come back and do something with that 50%, whether it's solution mining or if there's a new mining technique or some way they'll they'll process that.

- One can't help, but recognize here that there are employees that have worked here for a long time, at least that has struck me.

I'm guessing that there are maybe second, third, fourth generation miners from the area here in Southwest Wyoming.

It's a family thing for many.

- Yeah absolutely And one thing that Ciner does is we are a family and, and we, we take care of each other.

We have a very great safety culture that we're extremely proud of.

It's one of the things that causes people to come to work for us and stay with us for a long time.

We don't, a lot of people say safety is a priority.

We don't say that because your priorities change day to day.

If it's a value, it's part of who you are, it's part of who the company is, plays into every decision you make.

- So you mine trona.

You produce soda ash.

How does that happen?

- So it's a very labor intensive process with a lot of big equipment.

And it basically all starts here in the mine with the trona and We use big conventional miners and we'll go out and see some of those but they dig the rock.

We crush it down a little bit here in the mine and then send it to the surface where we dissolve it in water, remove all the impurities and then boil the water back off.

And, and you've got soda ash.

- I think people will be amazed when they really step back and think about how soda ash is used in their lives.

Give us some examples.

- Yeah.

So, I always my favorite trivia fact, and I'm a Wyoming guy, so, but is, cause a lot of people don't know about us.

So one of my favorite trivia facts is every piece of glass in the United States has soda ash in from Southwest Wyoming, every piece of glass, whether it's in a high rise skyscraper or your binoculars or your car windshield, it has soda ash in it from Sweetwater County.

And I don't think a lot of people know that, but it's also very diverse, not just glass, although that's the main driving influence of the market.

It's used for pH adjustment in water treatment.

So you're drinking it in your water.

It's used for chemical adjustment and all sorts of different processes.

It's used in baking soda.

It's used as a preservative in food products.

And I think if I remember this number, right, the average person ingests like eight pounds of soda ash in a year.

- Agriculture has uses for soda ash.

- Yeah, agriculture also uses it in, in things like fertilizer production, also pH adjustment of the ground and different things with agriculture.

- Your markets are international.

- Absolutely, and in fact, if you think about glass as a commodity, the United States is a fairly flat market and we've got all of our homes, we've got all of our cars, you know, but where glass is really growing is in countries where they're developing, where they're getting homes for the first time and sky rises and cars for the first time.

So it's in Asia, it's in India, it's in Mexico, all those areas that are still growing and developing.

- There are plans to expand what Ciner does in Wyoming.

And let's, let's talk about that right now.

Here we are at the Big Island Mine, but this may not be it for where Ciner mines trona here in Wyoming.

- Right, so yeah, I mentioned we have two soda ash plants in Turkey and they're both natural soda ash plants, but they only have a mine life of about 30 years left 30 to 40 years left.

So with that, we've looked at how do we expand and use this resource in Southwest Wyoming and Ciner has big expansion plans from growing this facility by 40% is one of our plans that we're working on.

But we're also going to do two new Greenfield projects south of Green River and use the same technology that we're using over in Turkey and solution mining.

- And that might mean mines that are maybe a little deeper, but then maybe not as there won't be maybe miners down.

in those mines right?

- Correct, there is not miners underground, but you do manage a well field.

So there's sort of an offset in the workers.

You've still got a workforce that's managing the well field to pump that water underground and dissolve the trona, leave all the impurities underground and then bring the trona solution up.

- So now how is the product soda ash transported to its markets today?

- So the majority of it's transported through rail, I would say probably of our market anyway, I would say probably 75 to 80% of it's transported in bulk rail.

We send out about 80 to a hundred cars, train cars of soda ash every day.

And then the rest is either in bulk trucks for some of our more local customers and distributors or 50 pound bags.

And a lot of the chemical industry uses 50 pound bags because they just don't need the big quantities.

- Give me a sense of what soda ash what trona in Southwest Wyoming means to the economy here in the state.

- Well, I think it's hard to put into perspective because everybody wants to compare us with coal and the huge volumes of coal that come out of Wyoming or came out of Wyoming.

And, you know, we're looking at a lot smaller, you know, almost a 10th of the volume that comes out of Sweetwater County, but it's still an important contributor to the state economy.

If you look at 2,800 high paying jobs in Sweetwater County that contribute to the economy, between taxes and royalties, the industry in Sweetwater County contributes about $500 million to the state economy, state and local economies.

So it's a big impact from, and while it isn't as big as coal, it's been steady since the 60s, we have our ups and downs, but we're always going to need glass.

It's been a steady contributor to the economy and it's a quiet little industry over here in Sweetwater County.

- Talk about the need for glass.

The longterm vision might be to manufacture glass right here.

That's, what's done in Turkey.

- Absolutely, one of the things that that Ciner does is when things are successful, they'll repeat them at other businesses and we're involved in container glass in Turkey.

And in fact, we were just working on building a new plant adjacent to one of the soda ash facilities over there.

So we've talked about it already bringing it to Wyoming, and we've talked with the legislature and the governor about it and, and they're excited, but it's down the road.

I mean, we've got a big investment going on south of Green River to the tune of about $500 million and, I'm sorry $5 billion.

And so that's a big investment and we got to get that up and running before we hook on a glass plant (Craig laughs).

- Be exciting for Wyoming's future though.

- Oh, absolutely.

Because that's one thing we always talk about is diversify the economy, diversify the economy.

Well, we've had the, you know, the trona mines have been here for 60 years, but how do you diversify that and get glass manufacturing close to these businesses so.

- Craig COVID impacted the trona industry.

How?

- Yeah, so it had a big impact on us, like everybody else now.

And, and number one, we were concerned about the safety of our employees and we wanted to take care of our family.

So we sent a lot of our workers that could work from home, like, like our office functions, accounting, HR, those kinds of functions.

We had them work from home, set them up in home so that they were a little less exposed.

But obviously you can't mine from home.

You've got to be here at the site.

And so we made special arrangements there, extra cleanings, social distancing, all that stuff.

But we thought that maybe it wouldn't have as big of an effect on us but when they started doing things like shutting down all the automakers to, you know, to manufacture the ventilators and, and all the housing growth shut down and the building shut down, it started to have an effect on us.

And it was, it was a huge effect.

- And as you said earlier, primarily there are other factors, but primarily glass markets dictate trona markets.

- Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, it is the main driver in our business and probably 60 to 70, even 80% of our business.

So depending on which customers we have, so what our pro portfolio looks like.

So yeah, it had a big effect and one of the things happened as we went into, was everybody kept producing.

So we sort of flooded the market with soda ash.

Well then when things started coming back, the price was down, so now that the demands come back, the price is finally starting to come back up.

- So give us the sense, what is the short-term outlook?

What is the long-term outlook?

- Well, I think if you look at soda ash, just on a year, on year basis, it grows about 3% per year.

So if you look at the global market, it's about 60 million tons of soda ash with what China produces and what we produce.

It's about 60 to 70 million tons of soda ash.

So if you look at just 3% growth on that every year, that's a big amount that somebody has to expand to make up for that growth ,so it's a good outlook.

And I think it's a growth outlook and a big opportunity for Wyoming.

- Craig I was surprised to learn that natural soda ash, isn't the market leader in the soda ash markets.

It's synthetic soda ash.

First tell us the difference and why is that?

- So synthetic soda ash is basically made from salt not trona.

There was the Solvey process is what originally came up with the synthetic process.

It was used in Europe.

And then now it's used in China where the majority of soda ash is made right now, we only make about 12 to 15 million tons here in the United States currently.

So the majority of that 60 to 70 million has made in China.

So, but they don't export a lot either.

They consume almost all of it, but when the growth has to come, it's gotta come from somewhere.

So China is exclusively synthetic, which is very energy intensive.

And, you know, China does not have the same environmental regulations.

Absolutely, and so it, it's very hard on the environment, a lot bigger carbon footprint.

And we want to make all the soda ash here in Southwest Wyoming.

- Trona is used in a lot of places, it's used in pollution control.

That surprised me.

- Yeah, one of our best customers is the power plant that's east of Rock Springs.

And they actually put liquid trona in their stack to take the acid out of the emissions that are coming out of there before it goes up in the air.

- It's also becoming very important in battery technology.

- Battery technology, yes.

We're working with a lot of new companies and new customers, lithium carbonate, the carbonate in lithium carbonate, which is the battery is soda ash.

So it's a new, exciting technology for us.

And then there's also battery disposal that we've been doing for years.

And we have a couple of customers that do that.

- We have more to see in the Big Island Mine, Craig, we're going to take our viewers on a little more of a tour to see how trona is mined.

So thanks for joining us here.

Let's march on.

- All right.

- We're now six miles away from where we were just a moment ago, talking with Craig Rood.

I'm now with John Ramsay, John we're in the part of the mind that is active and we just witnessed a lot.

Tell us what we were looking at, introduce yourself and what your job title is here.

- Hi, so I'm John Ramsay my title is crew lead.

We were just up in the face, you know, watching our continuous miners at action.

What, you kinda observed was a continuous miner starting, we call it the third full pass, and loading shuttle cars.

We run the pretty good size, shuttle cars, largest ones in our operation, our mine.

And theyre right about 25 tons per car and loading shuttle cars.

They were transitioning over to our feeder breakers and kind of getting that ore on the belt, and to the bottom area where it can be hoisted out.

- On a good day each one of those shuttle cars will make maybe a hundred trips back and forth to those feeder breaks.

- Yep a hundred passes.

And they got a lot of things to watch for.

There's a lot of guys, a lot of moving parts going on, and it's a lot to ask for those guys to you know, focus each pass.

Cause each one is critical.

- You're one of the younger employees here, John, what's your background?

- My background, I actually started out here with OCI, now Ciner, of course, as a mine engineer.

And even before that, I was out here as a summer intern working with actually these guys that kind of put me on a production crew, you know, learned it firsthand from the bottom up.

And I really enjoyed that and it's been a great experience.

So did the summer internship, graduated college came out here.

I've been here for about seven and a half years and I've been enjoying every moment of it.

- Tell me about the breadth of what happens down here.

You were talking about there are good days might be a hundred, a hundred trips, there are bad days.

Lots of moving parts, as you were talking about and things can kinda go wrong.

Tell me what can go wrong.

- Oh man.

- What can make a good day, maybe not such a good day.

- As you said, there are a million moving parts and there's a lot of factors of you know, things that can go wrong.

We have a grand sort of issues.

A lot of them are equipment wise.

A lot of like a lot of things that break, that go down.

And with that scale with these things, as big as they are, they're not very forgiving.

Sometimes they can do damage to each other or such, but sometimes we have electrical issues.

All of our equipment is electrical down here and run on cables.

Sometimes those cables can get damaged and require us to shut down, lock out the equipment and make the required repairs.

Sometimes the surface, has their own issues.

Sometimes they can not take ore at the speed that we want to give it to them.

So thus, they will say, hey we need to hoist, a little slower.

You guys will eventually maybe fill up our bins that we have at the bottom area and as soon as those bins fill up, we can't keep giving it to emm.

So our belts will shut off.

And thus kinda going into full bins here.

So full bins, we stop production, our belts are off.

We do other little honey-dos that we have around the section around the section.

So I'm curious what interested you in this work originally?

Why did you want to go to a mining school?

- Ah, that's a really great question.

So, from I'm Las Vegas, Nevada that was a big part of our history, the Gold Rush.

And that was kind of the first little, I guess, spark of interest.

I had a lot of family in South Dakota.

We'd always drive right through here.

We'd always drive through Gillette and I would always see the big haul trucks running on the side of the interstate.

And I was always just fascinated with the size of the equipment.

And when I moved to South Dakota, I was not very far from a school that did engineering, did mining engineering, which was kind of a small niche.

I always knew I wanted to do engineering.

I loved math and science, but the fact, the idea to maybe not be stuck behind a desk my whole life and do that like that was it.

I was that really, that was kind of the cherry on top.

So I went into that really enjoyed my studies fell more and more in love with the mining industry.

And after my first internship, which was underground, not exactly here, I knew underground was the thing for me.

I really liked, you know, discovering new territory, being somewhere where no one else has ever been before.

It really was just a great environment.

- Tell me the type of people that work for you.

How many, what do they do?

- Okay, so on a full day, we will have five operators.

And what we got is our continuous miner operator our bolt operator.

We have two show cars that we run on a section, and then we have someone that would call utility guy.

Our utility guy is in charge of some of the ventilation setup that we have and other honey-dos that we have throughout the day.

That utility guy will also relieve on some of our other equipment.

He'll help us relieve, make sure those guys get breaks and kinda run the equipment when our main typical operators are not.

Also we have a mechanic and myself.

So in the grand scheme, we have seven guys total on section, when we're running.

- How many miners are continually running in the mine?

- Typically we will run, we have two sides of the mine.

Typically we will run one miner on each side.

There are instances where we'll run two miners on one side, but we're kinda at that brink of what our crusher can handle, what our, how fast our hoist can operate.

And also it takes a toll, I think, on some of our equipment, such as our belt lines and really pushing it to their max.

- John, we're going to reconnect with Craig, but thank you so much.

- Oh, anytime.

- Taking a moment to visit with us and for showing us around down in what is, I can only describe it as an impressive operation.

- Thank you.

- Thanks for joining us on Wyoming Chronicle.

- No problem be careful out there.

- And as we conclude our Wyoming Chronicle for the day, Craig, we're back with you and again, we're six miles away from where we were visiting with you earlier.

yet we're, you know, almost 800 and some feet underground.

It's an amazing operation, number one.

But for someone like John, a young student who has an interest, it's a workforce development question to get folks here and a relationship with colleges, those things are important.

How has that managed?

- Yeah we've done a lot of work with our local community college, Western Wyoming over the years to help us train our workforce, especially in the skilled type positions like mechanics, electricians, mine maintenance, hydraulics.

And we actually, about 15 years ago set up a program with them where they would take our employees.

They were already employees and we would send them to college for two years and train them.

And they would come out of that training with a certificate and be well-trained very versatile employees.

And it was really unique when we set it up.

But now the program has become very popular.

The other mines use it and it's great because the employee, it's not Johnny training, Frank to work on a miner, it's it's science behind it and, and a rigorous program to train them.

Cause we we've had trouble over the years with numbers of skilled skillsets like mechanical electrical and things like that.

- We also visited on our way down here and it's quite a trip through an incredible maze.

A lot of the mine that we came through, it was manufactured, I guess, blown up with dynamite.

It's an amazing difference to what we saw just now with the miner.

Tell us about the old days of, of mining trucks.

- Yeah You know, it's crazy.

Cause I think a lot of folks, when they think of a mine and I'd be curious of your opinion but they think of what they see on TV with coal mines and stuff.

And that technology never advances, but this is literally state-of-the-art stuff.

I mean, our miners are remote control operated and all of it, it has control systems in it that'll shut down if certain things aren't met certain clearances aren't met and it came from literally blowing up the wall with dynamite and hauling it off with a loader to shuttle cars and getting it on the belt.

And we've went from crews of like 15 to 20 down to a crew of six that does 10 times the amount of work.

And so technology has really affected us.

And you know, honestly, we're working on another partnership right now with the University of Wyoming on control technology degrees and other specialized engineering degrees that can actually help us with this never-ending technology boom.

- Correct Craig Rood, it's been a pleasure for us to see with our own eyes, what happens here.

I'm not sure it's a secret amongst those in other places in Wyoming, but it's certainly an important part of Southwest Wyoming, but it really is important to all of planning.

- Well thank you am glad you came and we're always happy to show off trona mining.

- Thank you for joining us on Wyoming Chronicle.

- Thank You.

(soft upbeat music plays) - [Narrator] Funding for this program is made possible in part by the Wyoming Humanities Council, helping Wyoming take a closer look at life through the humanities thinkWY.org and by the members of the Wyoming PBS Foundation.

Thank you for your support.