A turf war breaks out over control of the global seabed
After years of working with the ISA, The Metals Company is seeking a new regulator
Last week I was in Kingston, Jamaica, covering the ISA Council meeting for NPR. Member countries and observers spent six hours each day in a windowless conference room drafting regulations for seabed mining. While the aim of this effort is noble – to steward the common heritage of humankind – the process itself can feel dull. It’s like sitting through two straight weeks of grammar class, as negotiators debate every little preposition and comma.
But on Thursday afternoon, something strange happened. A large group of negotiators suddenly got up and fled the Council chamber without a word.
Turns out, they were huddling with their delegations, deciding how to respond to a shocking announcement from The Metals Company: The firm will seek permission to mine the international seabed – not from the ISA, but from the U.S. government.
The move suggests The Metals Company (TMC) is done cooperating with the framework agreed to by the vast majority of nations. The ISA’s 169 member countries assert sole authority to decide when and how mining happens on the international seabed. But the U.S. never joined that group and says it isn’t bound by ISA rules.
Now a showdown is brewing – with the ISA on one side, and the U.S. on the other – over who controls mining beyond national jurisdiction.
What does this TMC announcement mean?
The firm thinks the Trump administration offers a faster path to mining approval than the ISA, which has been drafting exploitation regulations for more than a decade.
In contrast, the U.S. already has seabed mining rules on the books – though they were created decades ago, when scientists knew little about the deep ocean, and nobody has ever actually applied to mine through them.
It’s essentially an end-around of the multilateral process TMC had been cooperating with for years, most notably through their partnership with Nauru to open a mine in the Eastern Pacific Ocean.
Despite the company’s best efforts to speed up the process, ISA mining regulations remain far from complete. That’s evidence of multilateral cooperation “not working,” TMC CEO Gerard Barron told me for the NPR story. “The world needs strong leadership,” he said. “The U.S. has that right now.”
Barron previously told me “America First is good news” for the seabed mining industry. Other industry leaders have predicted the Trump administration is “very likely” to open federal waters to seabed mining.
So TMC clearly likes its chances with a federal government stocked with supporters of seabed mining. It’s unclear how the pivot will affect TMC’s partnership with Nauru. When I approached Nauru’s ISA delegation after the news broke on Thursday, they gave me just about the quickest “no comment” I’ve ever gotten – understandably.
How is the ISA reacting?
Not well.
On Friday morning, the ISA Council pre-empted its planned agenda to discuss TMC’s announcement. Secretary-General Leticia Carvalho, presiding over her first ISA Council meeting, kicked things off with an affirmation of the ISA’s “exclusive mandate” to govern mining on the High Seas.
She said any mining activity “must be carried out under the Authority’s control. This remains the only universally recognized legitimate framework,” adding that “any unilateral action would constitute a violation of international law.”
Next, dozens of countries took the floor to join Carvalho in condemning TMC’s announcement. They included nations with widely varying stances toward deep-sea mining, including China, Costa Rica, France, Russia, Chile, India, Norway, Cook Islands, and many others.
The U.S. delegation – sent by the State Department each year to observe the proceedings – looked on in silence.
What might happen next?
TMC says its U.S. subsidiary will apply to the U.S. government for “exploration licenses and commercial recovery permits” by the end of June this year. Those applications would be reviewed by the NOAA, within the U.S. Department of Commerce.
The U.S. government has said little on the matter publicly, beyond confirming that TMC has reached out to learn more about the application process and asserting that U.S. companies can indeed apply through the government to mine in areas beyond national control. The statement did not mention the ISA.
Reuters reports the Trump administration is mulling an executive order to fast-track seabed mining.
The U.S. has generally treated the ISA’s work as customary international law. And State Department officials have respectfully observed ISA meetings, building years-long relationships with member-state delegations.
Now though, TMC is asking the U.S. government to flout the ISA’s entire mandate. Many ISA delegates I spoke to were fearful that the Trump administration might just play along.