Pulling the plug on ocean minerals.

Pulling the plug on ocean minerals

In 1983, when President Reagan established the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ)--a 200-mile-wide border around the coasts of the United States--the possibility that the ocean would be a rich and profitable source of minerals seemed to be rising with the tide (SN: 1/4/86, p.5). However, the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) underscored the recent ebb of this tide when it concluded in a report released July 21 that "For most offshore minerals, the near-term prospects for development do not appear promising.'

In recent decades, scientists have been discovering a myriad of minerals within the current bounds of the EEZ, including cobalt, chromium, manganese and platinum --strategically important minerals that the United States currently must import. However, despite the proximity of these deposits, technological, financial and regulatory problems are keeping most of these and other offshore minerals out of reach.

Many "hard' minerals (as opposed to oil and gas) are located out beyond the continental shelf, in waters that are often over a mile deep. The recovery of these deep deposits presents some "major engineering problems,' says J. Robert Moore, a member of the Department of Marine Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. "In terms of deeper-water deposits, we're talking at least 15 to 20 years before we see [mineral] recovery.'

Other deposits are located on the relatively shallow continental shelf, where mining is easier. According to OTA analyst Rosina M. Bierbaum, the obstacle to shallow-water mining is simply a matter of economics. "It's just more expensive to get [the minerals] up off the bottom and get [them] to shore to process. . . . and we don't have any indication that the offshore stuff is a higher grade.' Given these factors and the depressed prices of certain minerals in recent years, companies have little incentive to mine these shallow-water deposits, she says.

However, says Michael Cruickshank, a marine minerals consultant in Hamilton, Va., "it's very difficult to make a general statement about the cost of mining offshore.' He believes that economic considerations are not primarily responsible for the total lack of mining off U.S. coasts.

The OTA and Cruickshank agree that a persistent problem in this field has been the process of leasing mineral rights. Although it is currently considering a hard-minerals act, Congress has yet to pass legislation that defines how companies can lease rights to mine hard minerals in the EEZ. Instead, the federal government has allowed the Department of the Interior to control this process through the broad interpretation of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which was passed in 1953, says Cruickshank, who retired this year from the Department of the Interior.

However, many groups, including members of the mining industry, have protested this practice. These companies feel that the present process does not provide enough incentive for companies to incur the significant risks involved in exploring and mining at sea.

If the government wishes to see the development of a mining industry for offshore minerals, says the OTA report, it will probably need to settle this issue and generally encourage such development. Moreover, OTA says, given the huge size of the EEZ--it is greater than two-thirds of the total U.S. land area--the government must also assume the responsibility of exploring the region's mineral potential.