U.S. Is Reviewing Impossible Metals Proposal to Mine the Seabed
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The Interior Department said it would review a new proposal for operations off the coast of American Samoa.
Commercial mining on the miles-deep Pacific Ocean floor came one step closer to reality with an announcement late Tuesday by the U.S. Interior Department that it would evaluate a request from a California-based company to extract metals off the coast of American Samoa.
The move follows an executive order last month that urged government agencies to expedite permits for seabed mining in U.S. territorial waters as well as international waters. Most other nations argue that the United States does not have the legal right to mine the seabed beyond its own territorial waters.
Parts of the ocean floor are blanketed by potato-size nodules containing valuable minerals like nickel, cobalt and manganese that are essential to advanced technologies that the United States considers critical to its economic and military security. Supply chains of many of these valuable minerals are increasingly controlled by China.
No commercial-scale mining of the seabed has ever taken place. The technological hurdles to seabed mining are high, and there have been serious concerns about the environmental consequences. Yet many countries have been impatient to get started as demand grows for the metals found there.
Under a United Nations treaty signed by nearly every country except the United States, mining in international waters is supposed to wait until regulations and environmental protections have been agreed upon. President Trump’s executive order last month stirred outrage across a broad swath of governments and activist groups that said permits issued unilaterally by the U.S. government would be in breach of widely accepted international law.