Companies are betting on deep sea mining for critical minerals
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LHH, a beautiful working world. Learn more at LHH.com slash beautiful. There are little bits of rare minerals in every tech gadget. Mining companies want to harvest more from the bottom of the ocean. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Novosafo.

The International Energy Agency projects the global market value of critical minerals could reach almost $800 billion by 2040. That's because we must have them for the electrified future. And right now, China is a dominant supplier.

The Trump administration wants to diversify, and it's looking to international waters where there's lots of these minerals strewn about on the ocean floor. Marketplace contributor Daniel Ackerman has been reporting on the deep sea mining companies that are working to figure out how to harvest in unforgiving terrain.

Most of the mining companies are interested in these strange roundish rocks called polymetallic nodules. They're really rich in some pretty useful metals, things like nickel, cobalt, copper, and manganese. And when I spoke to Jared Barron, the CEO of The Metals Company, that's one of these deep sea mining firms, he described the nodules to me this way. Imagine a gulf driving range that is filled with gulf balls.

But the golf balls are polymetallic nodules. And Nova, these golf balls really add up to a lot of metal. It's estimated that a single patch of the Pacific Ocean, about halfway between Hawaii and Mexico, contains more nickel, cobalt, and manganese than all terrestrial reserves of those metals combined. How do you harvest something like that when we're talking about deep down at the bottom of the ocean, as far down as like three miles? Yeah, so...

Of course, you would turn to the world's largest vacuum cleaner. We just heard from the head of the metals company. They probably have the most developed technology for this. And their plan is to send a remote-controlled collector vehicle, a bit larger than a school bus, down to the bottom of the ocean. It'll go back and forth across the seabed like a vacuum, just hoovering up these nodules. And then it'll pump them up a miles-long pipe to a ship waiting at the surface.

And, you know, this system, it's been tested. The metals company has done tests of this in the deep ocean, but at a much smaller scale than they would be using for commercial production. So it's still an open question just how reliable this tech would be when scaled up. Because, you know, the deep ocean is frigid. It's dark. It's corrosive. The pressures are immense. It's just not a friendly environment for heavy machinery. We'll be right back.

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Right. Regulation is a big question mark. And it depends on where you are. Countries can control mining near their shores, usually within about 200 miles from the coast. And some countries have allowed companies to start exploring for minerals. And in fact, just last month, President Trump started a process that could lead to a lease sale of minerals in federally controlled waters near American Samoa.

But, you know, most of the ocean is beyond the control of any one country. Nova, this is the high seas, you know, pirates and sea monsters, and the International Seabed Authority. Okay, I have not heard of that one. You got me. What's the International Seabed Authority? So...

It's a group, well, it's less exciting than the sea monsters, but the International Seabed Authority is a group of more than 160 countries, so most of the world's countries, and they've all come together to regulate mining on the high seas. You know, for years, they've been drafting rules for mining, which would cover everything from environmental safeguards to who gets paid.

But just this past April, President Trump issued an executive order basically to jumpstart the deep sea mining industry. And the order asserts that the United States has the right to grant mining permits on the high seas because the U.S. is actually one of the very few countries in pretty much the only major global economy that never joined the International Seabed Authority.

So past presidents have more or less respected the seabed authorities rules, but the Trump administration here has said, nope, those don't apply to us. So right now the U.S. is considering granting mining permits for international waters. And this would basically be an end around the process that the rest of the world is participating in together. So hopefully that wasn't too walkie or in the weeds, but probably was.

So Dan, what's going to happen next? Yeah, so it's not clear how the standoff between Trump and the International Seabed Authority will play out. But the other thing that I'm keeping my eye on is whether the business case for deep sea mining holds up. You know, a lot of car makers are actually moving away from using nickel and cobalt in their batteries, and those two are

Probably like the most economic metals that could be found in the ocean. And then also potential customers of deep sea metals might not want to buy them just due to public pressure against deep sea mining. Already we've seen a number of manufacturers like BMW, Volvo, Volkswagen, Samsung, Google, they have all pledged not to use ocean mined minerals in their products.

And then right now, there's actually a global oversupply of nickel and cobalt coming from land-based mines. So it's really an open question as to how much demand there's going to be for these deep-sea metals moving forward. That was Marketplace contributor Daniel Ackerman. We'll have more of his reporting on deep-sea mining on our website, marketplacetech.org. Jesus Alvarado produced this episode. I'm Novosafo, and that's Marketplace Tech. This is APM.

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