New policies may part the waters for ocean mining
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New policies may part the waters for ocean mining
Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden have both made it a priority to secure a sufficient supply of critical minerals from the ground. But some in the current Trump administration have called for mining a new source: the ocean floor.
Deep-sea mining remains controversial and has yet to be approved in either federal waters or internationally. But the industry is seeing opportunity.
As president, Biden pushed the U.S. to get minerals from places other than China. But when it came to the bottom of the ocean?
“The Biden administration was officially on the fence, but really not wanting to do anything with deep-sea mining,” said Oliver Gunasekara, CEO of Impossible Metals, which hopes to harvest potato-shaped hunks of metal from the Pacific.
He said the Trump administration views the Department of the Interior like a balance sheet. “An opportunity to extract oil and gas and critical minerals. And they’ve been talking very much about the seabed.”
The shift in policy is a welcome one for the fledgling industry, which aims to start mining the seafloor in the coming years.
“For us, America First is good news,” said Gerard Barron, CEO of the Metals Co., which is also eyeing the Pacific. “As America became energy independent with the advent of shale, it can become mineral independent with this resource 1,000 miles southwest of San Diego.”
But that could pose a risk to the health of the ocean, said Beth Orcutt, vice president of research at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences.
While mining companies have developed some ways to clean up after themselves on land, like reforestation or water treatment, Orcutt said there’s no evidence that it’s possible to do that in the deep sea.
“The disruption may be permanent, at least on human life scales,” she said.
There are also financial concerns. Two of the main metals available on the ocean floor are nickel and cobalt. Those have been key parts of electric car batteries, said Victor Vescovo, CEO of Caladan Capital. But today?
“There has been some major advancements in battery technology, the biggest being lithium iron phosphate,” he said.
Most EV batteries sold in China, the world’s largest market, use those materials. Vescovo said you can’t really find them on the ocean floor.
“So deep-sea mining is an extremely difficult solution to a battery metal problem that existed 10 years ago,” he said.
Still, the U.S. Geological Survey deems nickel, cobalt and other potential seabed resources as critical to the economy and national security. And the mining industry sees the next four years as its chance to go to sea and get them.
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