Companies heavily invested in seabed exploration for valuable minerals have urged the International Seabed Authority (ISA) to adopt long-delayed deep-sea mining regulations by 2025, highlighting concerns over the lack of a legal framework.
Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the ISA, based in Jamaica, is tasked with protecting the seabed in areas beyond national jurisdiction and overseeing mineral exploration and exploitation in these zones. While the ISA has been drafting commercial exploitation rules for over a decade, its Council currently only grants exploration contracts.
Since July 2023, a legal clause invoked by Nauru allows any country to apply for a mining contract on behalf of a company it sponsors, despite the absence of finalized regulations. The ISA Council aims to adopt a mining code this year to establish rules for extracting seabed minerals such as nickel, cobalt, and copper, which are critical for renewable energy transitions.
In a letter to the ISA Council obtained by AFP on Friday, eight companies, including Nauru Ocean Resources Inc., a subsidiary of Canada’s The Metals Company (TMC), expressed concerns about delays. TMC plans to file its first exploitation application in June.
“With this letter, we wish to express our concerns regarding the delay in the transition to the exploitation phase,” the firms wrote, urging the Council to finalize regulations in 2025. They highlighted investments based on expectations of a legal framework supporting the transition from exploration to exploitation.
The companies, collectively investing around $2 billion in exploration, environmental data acquisition, and mining technology development, warned of the impact of delays. “The prolonged delay in adopting the mining code and the potential unwillingness of the ISA or its member States to fulfil those expectations is deeply concerning,” the letter stated.
