A Canadian company is seeing opportunity in a Trump policy decision for a change.
What happened: Vancouver-based deep-sea miner The Metals Company applied for a commercial recovery permit from the U.S. government to mine the Clarion-Clipperton Zone — a large swath of the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and Mexico — for critical minerals.
- The move comes after Donald Trump signed an executive order (he really loves doing that) to expedite commercial and exploratory permits for seabed mining.
Why it matters: The application could mark the start of the first commercial sea mining operation… if it’s able to surmount the barrage of legal challenges surely coming its way.
- The prospective mining zone is partially in international waters, which the UN and most UN nations consider to be governed by the International Seabed Authority (ISA).
- However, the U.S doesn’t recognize the ISA, and argues it can go deep-sea mining wherever it pleases thanks to its 1980 Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act.
Big picture: Most coastal countries are hesitant to pursue deep-sea mining, as many scientists feel more research needs to be done on potential long-term environmental impacts, especially as new phenomena like “dark oxygen” have been discovered.
Plus: Proponents argue deep-sea mining is necessary for the green energy transition, but there’s growing skepticism about this as EV battery makers shift away from metals found in the seabed, like cobalt and nickel.—QH