Deep Sea Mining

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The still potential-but-perhaps-soon-to-be-real world of seabed mining took an interesting turn in the past month.

The still potential-but-perhaps-soon-to-be-real world of seabed mining took an interesting turn in the past month. The announcement from The Metals Company that it “has formally initiated a process…to apply for exploration licenses and commercial recovery permits under existing U.S. legislation, the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act of 1980 (DSHMRA)” came just prior to the White House’s issuance of a new executive order authorizing this approach.

These announcements mark major course changes. The Metals Company is essentially giving up on the existing international framework to govern and regulate seabed mining in areas beyond national jurisdiction (the high seas), and the U.S., which to date has been a largely passive observer of efforts to develop seabed mining, may be about to thrust itself into the center of the action.

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https://www.reuters.com/

President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order aimed at boosting the deep-sea mining industry, the latest attempt to boost US production of nickel, copper and other critical minerals used widely across the economy.

The broad order avoids a direct confrontation with the United Nations-backed International Seabed Authority and seeks essentially to jumpstart the mining of US waters as part of a push to offset China’s sweeping control of the critical minerals industry.

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https://www.reuters.com/

The White House is weighing an executive order that would fast-track permitting for deep-sea mining in international waters and let mining companies bypass a United Nations-backed review process, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the deliberations.

If signed, the order would mark U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest attempt to tap international deposits of nickel, copper and other critical minerals used widely across the economy after recent efforts in Greenland and Ukraine. Trump earlier this month also invoked emergency powers to boost domestic minerals production.

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https://www.nytimes.com/

Diplomats from more than 30 nations have criticized a proposal that could allow the start of seabed mining by 2027.

Nearly 40 nations, big and small, have voiced opposition to a plan by a Wall Street-backed mining company to team up with the Trump administration to circumvent international law and start seabed mining in the Pacific Ocean with a U.S. permit.

The widespread furor reflected a rare alignment from countries as varied as China, Russia, India, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Indonesia, France, Argentina, Uganda and the small island nations of Mauritius and Fiji. The plan also brought to the fore a pitched clash over who regulates seabed mining in international waters.

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https://www.msn.com/

The world’s oceans harbor a cultural heritage of sunken ships, remains of those lost in the transatlantic slave trade and Indigenous islanders’ spiritual ties to the sea that must be protected, NGOs and native peoples say.

They are pushing at a meeting in Jamaica of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) — an organization established under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea — for such protection to be enshrined in a mining code that is being negotiated to govern the exploitation of sea beds in international waters.

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https://www.france24.com/en/

Tokyo (AFP) – Rules on deep-sea mining in international waters must be driven by “sound science” and built on consensus, the head of the body charged with regulating the divisive practice said Thursday.

Deep-sea mining in international waters involves taking minerals like nickel, cobalt and copper — crucial for renewable energy technology — from the sea floor.

But researchers and environmentalists have long warned it risks destroying habitats and species that are little understood, and could upset delicate processes in the ocean that affect climate change.

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https://www.france24.com/en/

“It feels like a real crunch point,” Louisa Casson of Greenpeace International told AFP. “We are seeing surging momentum for a moratorium (on deep-sea mining). But at the same time, the industry is saying 2025 is the year when we’re just going to start applying to mine.”

Greenpeace has warned for years of the risks posed by deep-sea mining to the oceans’ unique, but only partly understood, ecosystems. Until recently, the idea of plunging deep into ocean abyss for the large-scale extraction of coveted minerals like cobalt, nickel and copper seemed a distant possibility.

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A recent scientific discovery of polymetallic nodules producing “dark oxygen” at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean provides another reason why deep sea mining shouldn’t be allowed

This July, a scientific paper in Nature announced an extraordinary discovery. On the sea-bed of the Pacific Ocean’s Clarion-Clipperton Zone, 13,000 feet below the sea’s surface, far beyond the reaches of sunlight, said the paper, metallic lumps have been splitting seawater to produce oxygen.

The paper hit headlines in no time. Until now, it has been assumed that photosynthesis — first by tiny microorganisms known as the archaeans and then by plants and trees — produced the oxygen in the earth’s atmosphere. Some of this oxygen, it was also thought, diffuses into oceans’ surface waters. And that, a part of it sinks down, all the way to the sea-bed, supporting life there.

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