"Why has this not happened?"

I think that we can attribute a major part of the answer to the fact that the drilling permit took five years to approve.   To my knowledge, this was among the longest waits for such permits in modern state history.  And that may explain why the last effort at doing a private placement of shares failed to raise sufficient money for drilling.  The promotion of it could not be sustained without permits that were expected far sooner than they arrived - no permit, no large masses of investments in drilling sufficient to move forward (though some here did put in money).  The approval came just last July, I think it was.  The failed private placement began in June of 2016, the permit application, I think, one or two years earlier than that so it had been expected at any moment.

I can only attribute the extraordinary delay in getting the permits to Obama-era environmental/anti-mining attitudes spilling over into the Arizona State Lands office.  Thank goodness that time has passed, but it leaves us floundering and with leadership ill-prepared to take over this kind of project, in my opinion.