Deep-sea mining doesn’t have international rules governing how minerals found on the ocean floor could be harvested despite more than a decade of debate, and that is pushing some companies to the breaking point.
One signaled its intention to bypass international law to start mining the ocean floor. And another has gone bankrupt, after six years of trying to do the same.
Last week, Loke Marine Minerals, a Norwegian company that wanted to mine the ocean floor for critical minerals like copper and cobalt, filed for bankruptcy. The company, established in 2019, raised $30 million in the hope of exploring the seafloor of the Pacific Ocean and Norwegian shelf for minerals. However, it struggled to move forward because of a lack of industry rules that damped investor interest.
“It was difficult to raise capital in the mining industry in general, but for deep-sea mining, deep-sea minerals, it’s been proven more difficult than we anticipated,” said Walter Sognnes, CEO of Loke. “The appetite for investing in deep-sea minerals has been much less than we thought, because, well, it is about uncertainty about the regulations.”
Read more at: the Wall Street Journal
