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  • Outlook for Critical Minerals with Deep-Sea Mining

Outlook for Critical Minerals with Deep-Sea Mining

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Apr 27 22:08 · 11.6k Views

Gerard Barron, The Metals Company, Chairman & CEO speaks with Romaine Bostick and Alix Steel about President Trump ramping up deep-sea mining for critical minerals.

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Transcript

  • 00:00 So you were there at the White House, so you had to have known that this was coming or that the administration was considering this.
  • 00:05 Your main process right now
  • 00:08 is to find critical minerals, but not necessarily in the ground on on the Earth's surface, as we typically do,
  • 00:15 but somewhere down at the bottom of the sea.
  • 00:17 Is that process better, more efficient and cleaner than getting it on Earth?
  • 00:22 It's it's so much better.
  • 00:24 And in fact, our job isn't to find them because we've already found them.
  • 00:27 We have around just under 2 billion tons
  • 00:30 of high grade nickel, copper, cobalt in the form of these polymetallic nodules
  • 00:35 like I have in my my hand.
  • 00:37 And they literally sit on the ocean floor just like this.
  • 00:40 And they're about 1100 miles
  • 00:42 off the coast of San Diego in the Pacific Ocean.
  • 00:45 And America used to lead this industry back in the 1970s.
  • 00:50 Industry was getting organised to start picking up these rocks.
  • 00:53 And if you look at the names of the companies that were involved in a back then,
  • 00:56 they were American Titans of industry.
  • 00:59 And then the process got a little bit taken over by this international organization.
  • 01:04 And
  • 01:05 what we announced a month ago
  • 01:06 was that we're bringing it back to America.
  • 01:08 We're going to
  • 01:09 apply for our our
  • 01:10 permit.
  • 01:11 We've spent the last 14 years going through the
  • 01:14 feasibility and spent almost
  • 01:16 3/4 of a billion dollars almost
  • 01:19 on the
  • 01:20 environmental studies, on building our pilot collector system, on showing how we're going to
  • 01:24 turn these rocks into metals.
  • 01:26 And we're ready to go.
  • 01:28 And we've just decided that America provides a much safer permitting pathway.
  • 01:33 Well, I am curious though, because as
  • 01:34 you know, there's already been pushed back on this from non-us
  • 01:37 countries, including China.
  • 01:39 The United Nations, which runs the International Seabed Authority, has made it clear that particularly the area you're looking at, kind of between Hawaii and Mexico are international waters.
  • 01:47 Why are you confident
  • 01:49 that EU s s ability to exercise authority over this region
  • 01:53 is actually going to go through without other countries getting in the way?
  • 01:58 It's it's very black and white.
  • 02:00 So in 1982, a number of countries signed on to the treaty known as unclass
  • 02:05 America did not.
  • 02:06 And in fact, America have been a consistent opposer
  • 02:09 to the treaty, have never ratified it.
  • 02:12 And so
  • 02:13 while 169 countries have agreed to this treaty on how to handle ocean 4 metals,
  • 02:19 the United States has never done that.
  • 02:21 And in 1980, they put in place regulations to allow the development of this very same resource.
  • 02:27 And in fact, they've carried out
  • 02:29 license holders carried out five environmental impact studies.
  • 02:33 There was 1 programmatic environmental study conducted by NOAA
  • 02:37 which was presented to Congress in 1995.
  • 02:40 The regulatory certainty is absolutely watertight.
  • 02:44 And
  • 02:45 okay, some of those countries are a little bit annoyed that America has said, well, we can go and do this and we will.
  • 02:51 But let me just reflect on that because
  • 02:53 Uncross
  • 02:54 instructed the establishment of the International Seabed Authority, they did that in 1994
  • 02:59 and they had one important job put in place, the regulations to allow for exploration
  • 03:04 and exploitation.
  • 03:06 Now
  • 03:07 we were awarded our contracts in 19 in 2011 and 12
  • 03:11 and
  • 03:12 the other license holders of which there are 17 more include China who are the largest in Japan and
  • 03:18 Germany and UK.
  • 03:19 And
  • 03:20 we have spent more money on Environmental Research than all of those others.
  • 03:23 But here we are 2025 and they haven't completed
  • 03:27 those environmental
  • 03:28 those regulations to allow commercialization.
  • 03:31 So, Gerard,
  • 03:32 the government is trying to set up
  • 03:35 basically three things, a sovereign wealth fund in essence that can invest in companies that would directly compete with China, potentially some kind of backstop that would circumvent any change in administration.
  • 03:47 So you have that certainty
  • 03:49 that you're talking about.
  • 03:50 Do you think any of those are going to like, are they happening right now?
  • 03:52 Have you had conversations with the administration about those specific things?
  • 03:57 We're talking to the administration about all of those things.
  • 04:00 But
  • 04:01 you know, we are a public company.
  • 04:02 We're listed on the NASDAQ as the metals company.
  • 04:05 The thing that has held our valuation back is permitting certainty.
  • 04:10 And that's why we were so pleased to see that executive order in place
  • 04:14 as of yesterday
  • 04:15 because
  • 04:16 capital is widely available when it comes to critical minerals.
  • 04:20 But it's that permitting uncertainty.
  • 04:21 Now, of course we will avail ourselves of whatever
  • 04:25 other helpers along the way are available to us, but
  • 04:29 so, so we'll wait and see how they shake out.
  • 04:31 And look, I think if you can get access to some of those government funds,
  • 04:35 you can probably get access to them in the
  • 04:38 in the private or or
  • 04:40 non government sector on even better terms.
  • 04:43 So we'll wait and see.