Canadian company seeks US permission to start deep-sea mining as outcry
ensues
[March 29, 2025] By
DÁNICA COTO
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — An abrupt announcement rattled members of a
little-known U.N. agency based in Jamaica that has protected
international deep-sea waters for more than 30 years.
The Metals Company in Vancouver, Canada said late Thursday that it is
seeking permission from the U.S. government to start deep-sea mining in
international waters, potentially bypassing the International Seabed
Authority, which has the power to authorize exploitation permits but has
yet to do so.
“It would be a major breach of international law…if the U.S. were to
grant it,” said Duncan Currie, an international and environmental lawyer
and legal adviser to the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, a
Netherlands-based alliance of environmental groups.
The Metals Company seeks seafloor minerals like cobalt, copper, nickel
and manganese used in electric car batteries and other green technology.
The announcement was made just hours before the 36-member council of the
International Seabed Authority met in Jamaica on Friday, the last day of
a two-week conference focused on how and if to allow deep-sea mining, a
years-long debate.
The authority was scheduled to talk Friday about the company’s
commercial mining application.
“The scale of the threat…has been taken incredibly seriously here,” said
Louisa Casson, a campaigner at Greenpeace who attended Friday's meeting.
“There are questions and a lack of clarity of what they actually plan on
doing.”
She said one question is whether the company plans to request a permit
anyway from the authority even as it continues talks with the U.S.
government.
Currie said the timing of The Metals Company’s announcement was
“insulting to the ISA.”
“It’s an extremely irresponsible threat. It’s basically holding a gun to
the international community,” he said.
The International Seabed Authority was created in 1994 by the United
Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which is ratified by more than
165 nations — but not the United States.
The Metals Company argued that the United States’ seabed mining code
would allow it to start operations in international waters since it's
not a member of the authority and therefore not bound by its rules.
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Delegates from across the world gather for a meeting by the
International Seabed Authority (ISA), a U.N. body in Kingston,
Jamaica, July 14, 2015. (AP Photo/David McFadden, File)
 The company said it was already in
discussions with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, among others.
“We have met with numerous officials in the White House as well as
U.S. Congress regarding their support for this industry,” the
company said in a statement.
NOAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Metals Company criticized what it said was “slow progress” by
the International Seabed Authority on a proposed mining code that
has yet to be finalized.
The authority has issued more than 30 exploration licenses but no
provisional licenses.
Most of the current exploration is happening in the Clarion-Clipperton
Fracture Zone, which covers 1.7 million square miles (4.5 million
square kilometers) between Hawaii and Mexico. It is occurring at
depths ranging from 13,000 to 19,000 feet (4,000 to 6,000 meters).
More than 30 countries including Canada have called for a ban, pause
or moratorium on deep-sea mining, and companies including Volvo,
BMW, Volkswagen, Google and Samsung have pledged not to use seafloor
minerals.
“The international seabed is the common heritage of humankind, and
no state should take unilateral action to exploit it,” Greenpeace
said in a statement.
Scientists have warned that minerals in the ocean’s bowels take
millions of years to form, and that mining could unleash noise,
light and suffocating dust storms.
“The deep ocean is one of the last truly wild places on Earth, home
to life we’re only beginning to understand. Letting deep-sea mining
go forward now would be like starting a fire in a library of books
nobody’s even read yet," said Emily Jeffers, a senior attorney at
the Center for Biological Diversity.
However, companies have argued that deep-sea mining is cheaper and
has less of an impact than land mining.
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