Seabed mining gains friends in high places
Could Trump offer mining leases in federal waters? “Very likely,” says one industry leader.
Seabed mining has quite the cheerleading squad in the new Trump administration.
To name a few: Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, UN Ambassador nominee Elise Stefanik, and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz have all voiced support for deep-sea mining (DSM) as a counter to China’s dominance of global mineral supplies.
It’s a big shift from the Biden administration, which had little to say about DSM. And it’s been a cause for celebration in the DSM industry.
“For us, America First is good news,” Gerrard Barron, CEO of The Metals Company, told me for a radio story I reported this week for Marketplace. (The Metals Company’s stock price has nearly doubled since the start of this year.)
The federal embrace of DSM could clear the way for domestic processing of seabed minerals, said Barron. Trump’s agenda will “help us get through the permitting and certainly help us to make a decision on where we should refine these materials. We think that with the new Trump administration, it’s much more interesting to bring the materials to the USA.”
The Metals Company has previously explored Texas as a processing site for its seabed haul – a haul which would likely come from international waters.
But some in the DSM industry are also eyeing federal waters as a source of nodules.
Oliver Gunasekara, CEO of Impossible Metals, told me his top priority from the Trump administration is for the government to initiate a leasing process for seabed minerals within the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone. “We would very much like that to happen. And we feel from the discussions that we’ve had, that’s very likely.”
If allowed, Impossible Metals would explore the waters near American Samoa, said Gunasekara. ”The Cook Islands say they have something like $10 trillion-worth of minerals in their Exclusive Economic Zone. We would imagine that American Samoa, being adjacent to the Cook Islands, probably has a similar level.”
At this point, such talk is mostly industry hype – it's exceedingly unlikely anybody will mine federal waters in the near future. Even if the Trump administration gave the green light, companies would have years of technical and financial hurdles to clear. Not to mention the protests, boycotts and bad publicity that would likely ensure.
Still, the DSM industry seems buoyant about its prospects during the Trump administration. If nothing else, it’s good to have friends in high places.