The Economics of Deep-Sea Mining: Opportunities and Misconceptions

In April, the Trump administration issued an executive order to accelerate the development of deep-sea minerals — part of its broader push for “energy dominance.” The world’s oceans hold vast, untapped deposits of critical minerals like nickel, copper, manganese, and rare earth elements — all essential to batteries and clean energy technologies.

Despite decades of interest, no commercial deep-sea mining project has begun production. The reasons? Regulatory uncertainty, environmental concerns, and the complexity of processing polymetallic nodules.

So what does this new executive order actually do?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Hans Smith, president and CEO of Ocean Minerals, a company participating in exploration of the Cook Islands. Shayle and Hans cover topics like:

• What the Trump executive order mandates — and its legal limits

• The bottleneck of U.S. deep-sea exploration 

• The controversy about U.S. legal authority over international waters

• The economics and geopolitics of deep-sea hotspots like the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, Japan, and the Cook Islands

• The technical challenges of refining polymetallic nodules

• CapEx, OpEx, and barriers to commercial deployment

Resources:

• Catalyst: Mining the deep sea

• World Resources Institute: What We Know About Deep-Sea Mining — and What We Don’t

• Reuters: Trump signs executive order boosting deep-sea mining industry

Credits: Hosted by Shayle Kann. Produced and edited by Daniel Woldorff. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor.

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