By Todd Woody
Jul 21, 2025 (Bloomberg) –The leader of one of the most aggressive seabed mining startups spent years invoking global warming to spark interest in extracting avocado-sized rocks rich in electric-vehicle battery metals from the bottom of the ocean.
“We want to help the world transition away from fossil fuels with the smallest possible climate change and environmental impact,” Gerard Barron, the Australian chief executive officer of a company then known as DeepGreen, told a 2019 meeting of the United Nations-affiliated International Seabed Authority, which for a decade has been debating regulations to allow the mining of untouched, biodiverse deep-sea ecosystems in global waters.
That’s not Barron’s pitch anymore. Climate was out and critical minerals were in during an appearance earlier this year before a congressional committee in Washington, DC. His firm, renamed as The Metals Company (TMC), would help “ensure the nation’s energy security and industrial competitiveness for generations,” Barron said. “China is close behind.”
Barron’s new tack is working. In April, President Donald Trump issued an executive order expediting US licensing of seabed mining, departing from international law to unleash what the administration called a “gold rush” to “counter China’s growing influence.” The country is set to conduct ISA-sanctioned tests of two seabed mining machines in the Pacific over the next year.
China already dominates the critical minerals supply chain on land, and TMC had successfully tapped into the US president’s pursuit of China-free metals, expressed as a desire for dominion over Canada and Greenland. The global seabed, TMC repeatedly emphasized as it lobbied politicians and the White House, holds the planet’s largest estimated reserves of minerals like cobalt and nickel in the form of black rocks called polymetallic nodules. These cover the Pacific Ocean floor by the billions.
In an instant, Trump cleared the way for a race to the abyss to extract nodules, even though seabed mining technology remains under development and commercially unproven. At the ISA’s annual meeting in Kingston, Jamaica, delegates on Monday decried Trump’s move, with China’s representative denouncing the US for “unilateralist hegemonic acts” and attempting to “replace the global standards with US standards.”
Within days of Trump’s order, Canadian-registered TMC’s US subsidiary filed the world’s first application to mine the seabed in international waters, including an area it licenses from the ISA. An $85 million investment from a leading Korean metals processor soon followed. Nasdaq-listed TMC’s shares, which have periodically languished below a dollar, hit a 52-week high of $8.19 on Thursday.
A Silicon Valley startup called Impossible Metals, meanwhile, has applied for a license to explore and possibly mine nodules in US waters off American Samoa, with an aim to raise $1 billion. Then on July 14, a top executive at US defense giant Lockheed Martin told the Financial Times the company is in talks to give seabed miners access to international areas of the Pacific it licenses from the US. A Lockheed Martin spokesperson declined to confirm the report but said, “We appreciate the Trump administration’s focus on ensuring reliable sources of critical minerals, including the ocean.”
On Monday, delegates in Kingston ordered a report on ISA-licensed seabed miners at risk of violating their contracts with the body, a thinly veiled reference to TMC and other companies that might also seek to apply for US licenses to mine in international waters.
The Trump-triggered seabed mining boom faces significant hurdles, though. While TMC has told investors it expects to begin mining within a year of receiving a license, the technology to extract minerals from the seabed at depths of four kilometers (2.5 miles) could be years away from being deployed at scale. Its competitiveness with terrestrial mining is unknown, as is the economic viability of processing and refining seabed minerals amid seesawing metal prices and the growing market share of battery technologies not reliant on nodule metals. The US lacks such metallurgical capacity, and it could take years to bring online in the few countries outside of China with the potential to refine nodule minerals.
“Given the rapid evolution of batteries and other relevant technologies, there is great uncertainty about the future demand for critical minerals,” researchers at RAND wrote in a recent report. “A seabed mining industry, as a whole, faces considerable opposition from nations and organizations concerned about the potential negative environmental impacts.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The countries that TMC relies on for seabed mining and processing technology are among the ISA’s 169 member nations (plus the European Union) that oppose unilateral mining in international waters. Amid such backlash, a Japanese corporation, Pacific Metals Company, that planned to process TMC’s nodules has now told investors that it would only “launch operations once the international rules are finalized.”
“All those parties have a legal obligation to ensure that deep sea mining only takes place through the ISA,” says Samantha Robb, an Amsterdam-based attorney who specializes in ocean litigation.
At the ISA, delegates convened behind closed doors on Friday to debate how to respond to TMC’s plans. Barron, who once sat with the delegation of a tiny Pacific island nation that sponsors one of TMC’s ISA contracts, has been absent this year but he’s weighing in from afar. “Amid some noisy grandstanding coming out of Jamaica this month, this is a good reminder … the US has every right to pursue seafloor resources in international waters,” he wrote Wednesday on X.
In a statement to Bloomberg Green, TMC says it’s “on firm legal and regulatory footing,” citing the sizable investments it’s recently attracted. The company, however, cautioned investors in a May securities filing that a US mining license wouldn’t be recognized internationally, which could affect “logistics, processing, and market access” for the seabed minerals TMC mines.
‘It’s going to take some time’
More than a thousand miles southwest of Mexico on a September morning in 2022, a yellow, 80-metric-ton machine slowly rumbled across the seabed on tank-like treads, a plume of sediment billowing behind. During a two-month test for TMC, the 38-foot-long prototype vacuumed up 3,000 metric tons of nodules, sending them through a tube to a specialized surface vessel called the Hidden Gem.
TMC hailed the trial as a success. Yet any commercial operations are a ways off, even if the US grants TMC a mining license this year, given technological and legal obstacles that must be overcome.
Allseas, a Dutch-owned, Swiss-registered offshore engineering and construction company, developed the technology, the world’s only working prototype of a nodule mining system.
As demand for minerals used in electric vehicle batteries and renewable energy technologies continues to rise, companies are looking to the ocean floor for new sources. One such company, The Metals Company (TMC), is working with Impossible Metals to develop technology for harvesting polymetallic nodules from the seabed.
The company supplies the apparatus to TMC and is its second-largest shareholder. To meet TMC’s production targets, it must now build a much bigger version capable of harvesting nodules nearly around the clock under crushing pressure far from shore.
A US seabed mining license, however, would require TMC to deploy American-built and owned vessels. How the companies would comply with that mandate is unclear. Allseas, which is involved in providing technology for seabed mining, has stated that it will only begin engineering the technical systems for full-scale mining once all relevant regulatory conditions are met.
Impossible Metals uses a nodule collector called Eureka, designed to hover above the ocean floor and select individual nodules without disturbing marine organisms. The company has delayed trials of the Eureka technology in an ISA-licensed area of the Pacific due to the need for further refinement.
In a small lab in Pasadena, California, scientists at an Impossible Metals spinoff called Viridian Biometals are working on extracting metals from nodules using innovative methods. The treatment of materials containing nickel, cobalt, copper, and manganese is a complex process that requires new technologies.
While the US has no capacity for processing and refining nodules, companies like TMC are looking for overseas partners to handle this stage of the operation. Pacific Metals Company of Japan has already processed a pile of nodules collected by TMC, smelting them into a nickel-cobalt-copper alloy.
As the race to mine the ocean floor for valuable minerals intensifies, companies are facing challenges in meeting regulatory requirements, developing new technologies, and finding partners for processing and refining. The future of seabed mining will depend on cooperation between companies, governments, and international partners to ensure the sustainable and responsible extraction of minerals from deep-sea environments.
Deep-Sea Mining: A Controversial Venture
Despite the growing interest in deep-sea mining, full production is not expected to begin until 2029 at the earliest. This delay reflects the complexities and challenges associated with extracting minerals from the ocean floor.
One of the key players in this emerging industry is The Metals Company (TMC), which has partnered with Korea Zinc to explore the possibility of refining nodules into battery materials. While TMC has conducted successful lab tests, the feasibility of scaling up this process for commercial production remains uncertain.
The issue of deep-sea mining has also sparked debates among International Seabed Authority (ISA) delegates. The recent decision by the United States to engage in mining activities in international waters has raised concerns about the potential environmental and legal implications of unilateral mining efforts.
Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, unilateral mining by any country or corporation is prohibited. The ISA is tasked with overseeing seabed mining activities and ensuring that any benefits derived from mining are shared among member states. The US, although not a signatory to the treaty, has historically cooperated with ISA regulations.
Pressure is mounting on member states to refrain from supporting US-licensed seabed mining companies and to uphold the ISA’s mandate to regulate mining activities. Many countries advocate for a moratorium on deep-sea mining until the environmental impacts are better understood.
ISA Secretary-General Leticia Carvalho has emphasized the economic and reputational risks associated with bypassing the ISA’s oversight. Companies engaged in unilateral mining activities may face legal challenges and a tarnished reputation, which could jeopardize their investments.
In response to these concerns, Pacific Metals, a prominent player in the deep-sea mining sector, has underscored the importance of maintaining international credibility in its operations. The company recognizes the significance of adhering to international regulations and standards in nodule processing.
As the debate over deep-sea mining continues, the industry faces a critical juncture. Balancing economic interests with environmental concerns and upholding international laws will be essential for the sustainable development of deep-sea mining activities.
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