Experts Call Deep-Sea Mining A Hunt For “Fool’s Gold” As US Considers Circumventing ISA To Issue Mining Permits

The US government is reportedly considering an Executive Order that would issue permits to companies to mine the deep sea in international waters, circumventing the International Seabed Authority (ISA), the body that regulates mining activities on the high seas.

“This is a search for fool’s gold. Market prices for minerals and metals sought from the deep sea have sharply declined in recent years, driven by global oversupplies from conventional mining and battery innovations. This could be the most expensive cobalt and nickel that has ever been mined on the planet,” said Dr. Douglas McCauley, a professor at UC Santa Barbara and adjunct professor at UC Berkeley.

“These trends are in part driven by reduced demand from the electric vehicle market, which has become increasingly reliant on new types of batteries (e.g. the LFP batteries used in many Tesla models) that do not require difficult to obtain, expensive metals," said Dr. McCauley. "New innovation in ultra-fast charging stations designed for these new batteries, such as BYD’s recent announcement of charging stations that can add 400km of range in just 5 minutes, may further secure the dominance of these batteries that do not require metals from the ocean. Another challenge may be reluctance on the part of the US to land this material in US ports given the newly discovered radioactivity of these minerals."

“Unilateral mining of the deep sea, which is the common heritage of humankind, would be a fundamental breach of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which for over 40 years has provided stability in ocean governance,” said Duncan Currie, international legal expert and policy advisor for the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition. “Every country and every person would suffer the consequences.”

“Deep-sea mining is extremely challenging technically, highly destructive, not meaningful to worldwide production, and a very expensive, financially-risky solution to a battery metals problem that existed ten years ago,” said Victor Vescovo, Founder and CEO, Caladan Capital and retired naval officer, pilot, and undersea explorer. “It will not yield the profits or royalties promised, will not solve the environmental and security problems it claims, and will destroy tens of thousands of square kilometers of virgin seafloor – just to prove it doesn’t work.”

“The Metals Company is promising regulatory certainty in a regulatory vacuum,” said Bobbi-Jo Dobush, ocean conservation policy expert and author of Deep Sea Mining Isn’t Worth the Risk. “The only certainty is that seabed mining remains an untested, wildly expensive way to get minerals we have already innovated away from.”

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