Seafloor Miners Poised to Cut into an Invisible Frontier

Mining & Minerals - Evaluations / Deep Sea Mining

Date posted: 08/16/16

Julian Smith opines that people have been mining minerals like iron and gold for millennia. And for much of our lives today, from the europium, terbium and yttrium that help illuminate the screen you are reading to the copper in the wires that power it, we increasingly depend on elements from the depths of the Earth. But finding new deposits gets harder every year and mines are steadily growing larger, more expensive and more environmentally destructive (exaggeration ...not true). On land, that is. By some estimates the ocean floor has the largest resources of minerals such as copper, nickel and cobalt. The deep sea also holds gold, silver, platinum and the rare-earth elements used in high-tech devices and renewable-energy technology including iPhone displays, solar panels and magnets used in hybrid cars. Underwater deposits often have much higher grades of ore than those on land, meaning they contain a higher percentage of the desired minerals, in some cases by an order of magnitude or more. The trick is to bring the material to the surface in a cost-effective way. Canadian mining firm Nautilus Minerals says it plans to lead the way with the first commercial deep-sea mining project, scheduled to get underway within the next few years off the coast of Papua New Guinea. The idea of mining the seafloor goes back at least to 1870 when Captain Nemo in Jules Verne novel 20,000 Leagues under the Sea declared, In the depths of the ocean, there are zinc, iron, silver and gold deposits that would be quite easy to exploit. Only recently has deep-sea mining become technologically and financially feasible, thanks to using remotely operated subs and other technologies developed for deepwater oil and gas production. Proponents say higher ore grades mean deep-sea mining would be more cost-effective than land-based operations, with a smaller ecological footprint that would be less visible.