A Vancouver-based mining company is looking to sidestep the international agency charged with regulating mining in international waters after lengthy negotiations it says have gone nowhere.
The Metals Company (TMC) will instead seek permission from the U.S. to start deep-sea mining in the Pacific Ocean, rather than from the UN-affiliated International Seabed Authority (ISA).
Co-founder and CEO Gerard Barron says he believes U.S. could help start mining “much sooner than we would have been under the ISA pathway.”
“The United States’ regulator is open. They encourage… dialogue and consultation,” he said. “That’s how companies get projects moving through the permitting process.”
The move has alarmed observers and the ISA. The agency, since forming in 1994, and its nearly 170 member nations have been working to set regulations for mining in international waters but has yet to finalize any. It has issued exploration permits, but none for commercial mining.
The U.S. is not a part of the ISA. It has not ratified the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which established the agency and many rules for navigation, resource extraction and environmental protection.
TMC is seeking a permit through a U.S. law that predates the ISA, 1980’s Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act. It wants to extract small rocks from the seabed, called polymetallic nodules, in an area of the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and Mexico. The nodules contain valuable minerals like cobalt and nickel.
But the U.S. has never approved commercial mining in international waters and the head of the ISA says it doesn’t have the authority.
“Any unilateral action would constitute a violation of international law and directly undermine the fundamental principles of multilateralism, the peaceful use of the oceans and the collective governance framework established under [the UNCLOS],” Leticia Carvalho, the ISA’s secretary general, said in a statement last month.
Countries control seabed mining for just 200 nautical miles from their shores, under the terms of the UNCLOS. Beyond that is where the Jamaica-based ISA comes in.
TMC, partnering with the Pacific island nation of Nauru, got an ISA exploration permit back in 2011. Since then, the company has been frustrated by the pace of talks.
Environmental concerns have weighed heavily on ISA’s negotiations. Many countries — including Canada, France, Spain and New Zealand — have called for a moratorium on deep-sea mining until more is known about its environmental impact.
There are billions of tonnes of valuable minerals for electric vehicle batteries and energy storage at the bottom of the ocean, and a Canadian-registered company is leading the race to mine them. But marine scientists and environmentalists say it’s likely to risk a sea floor ecosystem about which little is known. Negotiations are underway at the International Seabed Authority this month in Jamaica.
“The deep sea is considered the common heritage of humankind. So that means it belongs to all of us, not just countries, not individual corporations, it belongs to all of us,” said Travis Aten, Halifax-based campaigner for the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, an international group that’s been closely following deep-sea mining negotiations.
“We don’t want to rush this. We want to get it right. We barely know anything about the deep sea or the impacts of mining.”
Barron says the ISA is “heavily influenced, some would say captured, even, by NGO groups who just do not want to see progress.”
In contrast, the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump is reportedly considering an executive order to fast-track deep-sea mining permits.
Barron says his company is in early consultations with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is responsible for reviewing deep-sea mining applications. NOAA has been targeted for massive layoffs by the Trump administration, which is pivoting away from climate action and research.
The company will file a formal application in the second quarter of the year, he says.
Barron says he believes the application is on “solid” legal ground, and that there will be no less oversight on any environmental impact.
“There is a legal framework that the United States put in place way back in 1980. So we know that we’re on solid ground there,” he said.
But Aten thinks if the U.S. approves mining unilaterally, it could upend how the oceans are governed and lead to a free-for-all for the seabed. Major players like China and Russia could decide to ignore the ISA’s authority and move into ocean mining — all without environmental oversight and financial benefits for the small island countries in the oceans being mined.
“Any other country could really just start grabbing up the international seabed,” he said.
He says TMC’s move calls into question its climate credentials. The company has long promoted deep-sea mining as more environmentally and socially conscious way of extracting crucial minerals, compared to land-based mining.
“What this is showing is that they never cared about all that.”
