Norway Rushes For First Place In Controversial Deep-Sea Mining Race

The Financial Times has reported that the Norwegian government is preparing plans to open up an area of ocean almost the size of Germany to deep-sea mining, as it races to become the first country to allow extraction of battery metals from its sea floor.

In the next two weeks, Oslo’s energy ministry will submit a parliamentary proposal to facilitate exploration and extraction by private actors, to be voted on by lawmakers come Autumn.

However, this raises the prospect of a bitter battle with the country’s powerful fishing industry and local and international environmentalists over the proposals. A concomitant push to enable mining close to its Arctic archipelago of Svalbard moreover risks a dispute with the same elements, and allied nations.

Amund Vik, secretary of Norway’s Petroleum and Energy ministry, tells the FT deep-sea mining would help Europe meet the “desperate need for more minerals, rare earth materials to make the transition happen.” Fluid that emerges from hydrothermal vents in Norway’s waters also contains other metals used for those purposes, including cobalt, while local seabed crusts can be mined for rare earth metals, such as neodymium and dysprosium.

These valuable elements are used to make magnets in wind turbines and the engines of electric vehicles. Presently their supply is dominated by China.

Cost/Benefit analysis missing

A largely unspoken, inconvenient truth is that in service of the clean energy “revolution”, countries the world over have rapaciously stripped their lands of precious metals required to build green technology. This has, in a perverse twist, come at a significant environmental cost.

Now, with waters the world over poisoned by copper extraction and stained red by nickel runoff, these supplies are close to spent. In turn, states have turned their attention to a potentially untapped reservoir of rare earth metals, found on the ocean floor. The US Geological Survey estimates billions of dry tons of polymetallic nodules packed with cobalt, manganese, copper, and nickel lie in wait there. Mining these riches, the wisdom goes, is essential for a cleaner, greener future.

Yet, while the potential yield in economic and environmental terms is supposedly vast, proper due diligence into the harms deep sea mining could inflict on underwater environments remains by and large unforthcoming, despite a concerted push by nations in recent years to make it happen on a grand scale.

This shortfall is partially attributable to the ocean remaining less explored than space presently, but also due to the International Seabed Authority prohibiting the 167 countries that have ratified the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea from mining deep areas, and limiting associated exploration efforts.

Nonetheless, experts speculate that deep sea mining could disturb fragile habitats, wipe out as yet undiscovered species, and unleash pollution that could have a catastrophic impact both below and above shore. The race is duly on to conduct a full audit of the benefits and costs of this approach, while removing barriers to its execution in the process.

Alright on the night?

For its part, Norway’s environmental agency has strongly opposed moves to enable deep sea mining. In response to a public consultation earlier this year, its representatives charged that the plan violated Oslo’s legal framework for seabed exploration, failing to provide enough sustainability data.

It also warned of “significant and irreversible consequences for the marine environment” from mining, and argued hydrothermal vents should remain untouched, with only small areas to be opened for mining. Further exploitation could compromise Norway’s claim to be a protector of oceans, and dependable source of sustainably sourced fish.

There is also the not insignificant issue that within the region earmarked by Norway for potential mining, a particularly contentious portion is governed by the Svalbard Treaty. This agreement grants Norway sovereignty over the islands, but also other countries the right to mine on land and in nearby territorial waters. Brussels, London, and Moscow alike challenge Norway’s calculation of the area of water covered by the treaty.

Norwegian prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre, co-chair of the Ocean Panel network of world leaders committed to protecting the oceans, has claimed deep sea mining can be conducted without harming biodiversity. Meanwhile, Egil Tjaland, secretary-general of industry group the Norwegian Forum for Marine Minerals, believes deep water to be a “speciality” for Norway due to its strong offshore oil and gas base.

“If someone gets there first, it should be us,” said Walter Sognnes, chief executive of Loke Marine Minerals, which plans to mine Norway’s metallic crusts. “We are a big fishery nation, we live by the sea, the ocean is our biggest resource …We would not be reinventing the wheel.”

ENDS

Kit Klarenberg

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