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U.S. Interest in Deep-Sea Mining Increases


The incoming Trump administration could give a boost to the nascent deep-sea mining industry (The Wall Street Journal, subscription).  
 
What’s going on: In December, the House passed its annual defense funding bill, which included an order that the secretary of defense provide a feasibility study on whether minerals procured from deep-sea mining—the process of harvesting valuable metals from the bottom of the ocean—could be processed in the U.S.  

  • The provision for a feasibility study “follows a number of cabinet appointments by Trump seen as friendly to deep-sea mining. Elise Stefanik, Marco Rubio, Howard Lutnick and William McGinley have all been nominated for positions on the president-elect’s team and have all previously voiced support for ocean mining.”  
  • While President Trump has voiced support for mining in general as a means of securing resources for the U.S., he hasn’t specifically discussed deep-sea mining.  

Why it could matter: Advocates say searching for metals on seafloors “could offer a new source of cobalt, nickel, copper and other minerals needed for the energy transition, defense technologies and other needs.” 
 
Others dip a toe in: Norway is the only country to date “to have outwardly supported deep-sea mining in its own continental shelf.” It voted to do so last January but paused the work in December in response to pressure from its Socialist Left Party. 

  • In late 2022, the International Seabed Authority gave Canadian firm The Metals Company the go-ahead to use a protype collector to vacuum pieces of metal from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean near the island nations of Tonga, Nauru and Kiribati. 
  • TMC “intends to make its first application to mine the sea floor this year” with Nauru, a member of the ISA.  
  • While the U.S. isn’t party to the U.N. Convention of the Law of the Sea, which established the ISA, “it sends one of the largest delegations to the meetings in Jamaica and has a presence during the talks.”  

A new ISA: ISA recently elected a new secretary-general, Brazilian oceanographer Leticia Carvalho, who has said in interviews that companies should not be granted ocean-floor mining licenses “before safeguards are in place,” according to another  Wall Street Journal (subscription) story.   

 

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