Canada’s DeepGreen Metals, a
start-up planning to extract cobalt and other battery metals from small rocks
covering the seafloor, has added a new area to its seabed portfolio, which
it believs could potentially help it solve the bottleneck supply of critical battery metals
needed for the world’s green energy transition.
The strategic acquisition of Tonga Offshore Mining Limited (TOML), announced Tuesday, gives the Vancouver-based company exploration rights to a third area inside the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) in the eastern Pacific Ocean.
The 4,000-kilometre swath of ocean,
stretching from Hawaii to Mexico, is known for containing enough nickel,
copper, cobalt and manganese to build over 250 million electric vehicle
batteries.
The new licence covers 74,713 km2 of CCZ seabed, with an inferred resource of 756 million wet tonnes of polymetallic nodules — potato-sized metals-rich rocks that lie in a shallow layer of mud on the seafloor.
DeepGreen’s exploration focus is the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), a mineral-rich, 4,000-km swath of the Pacific that stretches from Hawaii to Mexico.
DeepGreen believes that producing critical battery metals from polymetallic nodules has the potential to eliminate or dramatically reduce most of the environmental and social impacts associated with traditional mining.
“We believe now more than ever that
the world needs to work together to find solutions to address climate change,”
the company’s CEO and chairman, Gerard Barron, said in the statement.
The news follows DeepGreen’s
offshore engineering partner Allseas’ recent acquisition
of a former ultra-deepwater drill ship for conversion to a
polymetallic nodule collection vessel.
The vessel is being converted to
accommodate a pilot nodule collection system. After the nodules have been
collected and taken to shore they will be processed using a metallurgical
flowsheet developed by DeepGreen.
Unlike other seafloor miners, the company
doesn’t want to drill, blast or dig the bottom of the ocean. Its main goal is
to scoop up small metallic rocks located thousands of metres below the surface
in the North Pacific Ocean.
The deep sea, more than half the
world’s surface, contains more cobalt, nickel, copper, manganese and rare
earth metals than all land reserves combined, according to the US
Geological Survey.
Not enough studies
Mining companies exploring the
seafloor argue the extraction of those deep-buried riches could help diversify the current sources of battery metals.
Academics and scientist, however,
are concerned by the lack of research on the possible impacts of high seas mining. They fear the
activity could devastate fragile ecosystems that are slow to recover in the
highly pressurized darkness of the deep sea, as well as having knock-on effects
on the wider ocean environment.
Two year ago, the European
Parliament called for a ban on seabed mining until the environmental impacts
and risks of disturbing unique deep-sea ecosystems are understood. In the resolution, it also urged the European Commission to
persuade member states to stop sponsoring and subsidizing licenses to explore
and exploit the seabed in international waters as well as within their own
territories.
Shortly after, an international team of researchers published a set of
criteria to help the International Seabed Authority (ISA), a UN body made up of
168 countries, protect biodiversity from deep-sea mining activities.
So far, it has granted 29 licences to governments and
companies, authorizing them to explore in international waters.