August 29, 2025: US lead miner and recycler the Doe Run Company said on August 20 it plans to step up its deployment of a high-tech seismic program to study a broader range of mineral trends with greater accuracy.

The firm expanded the program last year to identify the most promising areas for drilling, reducing the number of exploratory drill holes and environmental impact.

Director of exploration and geology Carrie Dayton said the company plans to follow up on these newly identified targets during 2025, to see if structures identified are “what and where we thought they were and if they contain sulfide mineralization”.

Dayton said the firm’s next seismic survey would trial additional methods that could reduce or even eliminate surface disturbance.

Doe Run said it started using seismic geophysics — a tool that was previously primarily used in oil and gas exploration — to understand better what lies below the surface through non-invasive sound waves.

The firm said seismic technologies allow it to locate geologic structures that are likely to host ore minerals without prior drilling data and help to create detailed images of underground rock formations, helping geologists map subsurface geology with reduced surface disturbance.

In 2023, Doe Run president and CEO Matthew Wohl called for greater government support to boost domestic mineral production to meet clean energy goals. He said the US — and Missouri in particular — had the mineral resources, technology, and workforce required to support a green energy economy.

Last year, Doe Run was awarded a $7 million federal contract to build and commission a demonstration plant for the production of cobalt and nickel critical to the nation’s battery manufacturing sector.