DeepGreen Metals, a Canadian start-up planning to extract cobalt and other battery metals from the seafloor, has added a new area to its seabed portfolio, which it believes could potentially help it solve the bottleneck supply of critical battery metals needed for the world’s green energy transition.
The strategic acquisition of Tonga Offshore Mining Limited (TOML), announced Tuesday, gives the Vancouver-based company exploration rights to a third area inside the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) in the Pacific Ocean.
The 4,000-kilometre swath of ocean, stretching from Hawaii to Mexico, is known for containing enough nickel, copper, cobalt and manganese to build over 250 million electric vehicle batteries.
The new license covers 74,713 km2 of CCZ seabed, with an inferred resource of 756 million wet tonnes of polymetallic nodules — potato-sized metals-rich rocks that lie in a shallow layer of mud on the seafloor.
DeepGreen believes that producing critical battery metals from polymetallic nodules has the potential to eliminate or dramatically reduce most of the environmental and social impacts associated with traditional mining.
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