A plan to mine in federal waters

Also: Does the U.S. need a stockpile of deep-sea minerals?

Lots of deep-sea mining news this week. Let’s start with a major announcement just out from a mining start-up not named The Metals Company.

Impossible Metals wants to mine near American Samoa

Impossible Metals has asked the Trump administration to begin leasing swathes of federal waters (within the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone) for “exploration and potential mining.” The company believes the seabed around American Samoa is rich in polymetallic nodules, due to its proximity to the Cook Islands, where other mining firms have spent years exploring.

The U.S. controls islands across the Pacific Ocean, giving it a huge EEZ. Until now, though, mining companies have expressed little interest in exploring that EEZ – perhaps because of the well-documented abundance of nodules available outside U.S. jurisdiction in the Clarion Clipperton Zone.

BOEM and USGS, both within the Department of the Interior, are in the early stages of tallying critical mineral stocks within federal waters. This announcement indicates Impossible Metals wants to do some of that work itself – and likely much faster.

Federal leasing for deep-sea mining would be managed by BOEM, which also does leasing for offshore oil/gas and wind projects. Impossible Metals CEO Oliver Gunasekara believes it’s “very likely” the Trump administration will move forward with the leasing, according to his recent interview with the Spotlight.

A BOEM official confirmed that the Bureau received the company’s request for a lease sale on April 8, adding that the Bureau would decide by May 23 whether to initiate the leasing process.

So, more to come. Up next on the DSM news docket…

A government stockpile of seabed nodules?

President Trump wants the U.S. to stockpile polymetallic nodules. That’s the aim of a forthcoming executive order, according to the Financial Times.

The move would be the biggest action the U.S. has taken on seabed mining since the 1980 passage of the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act, if not ever. This could be the first step of the Trump administration laying down a smooth regulatory runway for the industry now cozying up to it.

(A reminder you probably don’t need: The Metals Company is already taking the extraordinary step of asking the U.S. to grant it permission to mine beneath the High Seas, circumventing the broadly accepted international process for doing so.)

This planned order has everything to do with combatting China’s domination of global mineral supplies. Last week, China ratcheted up restrictions on selling minerals to the U.S. And even before the current trade war, some in Washington have been watching with alarm as China pours money and political capital into seabed mining efforts.

Some background on mineral stockpiling

The government already keeps a stash of just-in-case commodity metals and materials, in the form of the National Defense Stockpile (NDS), managed by the Pentagon. It’s like the less-famous sibling of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

The NDS used to be massive. During the Cold War in the 1950’s, it contained $40 billion-worth (in today’s dollars) of stuff like tungsten for ammunition, mercury for artillery fuses, cobalt for aircraft fuselages and manganese for steel production. (Note those last two are found in abundance in polymetallic nodules.)

Since then, the government has sold off most of that stockpile. Today the NDS has just about $1 billion-worth of materials, spread across 6 storage depots nationwide. There have been bipartisan calls in recent years to build the stockpile back up, as both a hedge against China and an aid for the energy transition.

Should the U.S. add nodules to the stockpile?

This executive order could jumpstart the deep-sea mining industry by guaranteeing at least one customer for nodules – the government itself – even if deep-sea mining proves more expensive than terrestrial mining.

But some experts say a nodule stockpile alone won’t go very far in creating a robust ex-China mineral supply chain, because raw ore isn’t the problem. Most of it is already mined outside China anyway. Turning that ore into something useful – aka processing and refining – is where China dominates.

As Benjamin Sprecher, professor of industrial design engineering at TU Delft, writes: “America doesn't need polymetallic nodules. It needs a stronger industrial base around refining capacity and subsequent manufacturing steps.”

And all that will take time, money and, says Sprecher, consistent policy making.