Latest news with #deepseamining
CTV News
3 days ago
- Science
- CTV News
Next generation of deep-sea mining machines developed in Collingwood
The next generation of deep-sea mining machines are being developed and tested in Georgian Bay waters in Collingwood Ont., by the company: Impossible Metals on May 28, 2025. (CTV News/Luke Simard) The next generation of deep-sea mining machines are being developed and tested in Collingwood. Impossible Metals has been designing machines to mine critical minerals with an emphasis on the environment. This is a key contributing factor to Eureka II which is being tested in Georgian Bay waters. Jason Gillham, chief technical officer and co-founder of Impossible Metals said Collingwood is a great test site for the machine. 'The bay becomes a good test site for us because of its similarity to the deep ocean,' said Gillham. 'The deep ocean has very clear water and so to train our vision systems, to use our vision systems, we need that clear water, and the bay provides a fantastic test bed for that.' Deep-sea mining machines The next generation of deep-sea mining machines are being developed and tested in Georgian Bay waters in Collingwood Ont., by the company: Impossible Metals on May 28, 2025. (CTV News/Luke Simard) Eureka II has been testing the waters of Georgian Bay collecting data and test nodules in preparation for the next model. 'Our deep-water prototype, autonomous underwater vehicle,' said Gilliam. 'We're really looking forward to demonstrating this system and then moving on to our Eureka III, which is our production sized autonomous underwater system for collecting these polymetallic nodules.' Historically, dredge-based mining is not environmentally friendly, tearing up the ocean floor in the process. Impossible Metals has developed brand new technology and mitigated environmental concerns that the public has addressed. 'So, our vehicle isn't a dredging vehicle, it doesn't have a riser system, and it's not vacuuming up the nodules from the seabed floor,' said Oliver Gunasekara CEO and co-founder of Impossible Metals. 'What we are doing is hovering and using selective harvest to pick up the nodules the ones that we don't have any visible life on them.' Deep-sea mining machines The next generation of deep-sea mining machines are being developed and tested in Georgian Bay waters in Collingwood Ont., by the company: Impossible Metals on May 28, 2025. (CTV News/Luke Simard) The company is currently testing their second prototype with an end goal of launching a fleet into international waters. 'The end goal would really be to get to production with Eureka III, which is our full-size system but a fleet of them,' said Gunasekara. 'Ultimately we want to be a big mining operation but doing it in the most sustainable way.' The company adding Impossible Metals has taken the extra steps to ensure they keep the environment in mind. Impossible Metals The next generation of deep-sea mining machines are being developed and tested in Georgian Bay waters in Collingwood Ont., by the company: Impossible Metals on May 28, 2025. (CTV News/Luke Simard) 'There's a lot of pushback against mining, but we believe we can do mining in the most sustainable way,' said Gunasekara. 'We're going to a location that has orders of magnitude less life. We don't have human impacts and you compare that to a rainforest in Indonesia where there's a huge amount of life that's being impacted.' Tim Fryer, deputy mayor of Collingwood, said the town is happy that the company chose to test and develop their prototype in the town. 'We couldn't be more thrilled for them at this stage of their development,' said Fryer. 'We are really pleased and thankful for them choosing Collingwood as their location to work from.' Impossible Metals said it plans to develop Eureka III throughout 2026 with the goal of having Eureka III mining in international waters sometime the following year.
News24
3 days ago
- Business
- News24
Trump's order on deep-sea mining ‘could lead to the disintegration' of maritime law
US President Donald Trump authorised deep-sea mining in domestic and international waters. This move could undermine global maritime regulations. But the US never ratified the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. US President Donald Trump's move to sidestep global regulations and begin pushing for seabed mining in international waters could pose a wider threat of competing countries claiming sovereignty over the ocean, experts say. Trump in April signed an executive order to accelerate the permit-granting process for deep-sea mining in domestic and international waters, citing an obscure 1980 US law. And the Canadian deep-sea mining frontrunner The Metals Company has already filed an application in the United States to conduct commercial mining on the high seas - bypassing the International Seabed Authority (ISA). This is the body entrusted by a United Nations convention with managing the ocean floor outside of national jurisdictions. Ocean law is largely guided by that accord - the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), first signed in 1982 to prevent 'a competitive scramble for sovereign rights over the land underlying the world's seas and oceans', according to Maltese diplomat Arvid Pardo, the convention's forebearer. The US never ratified the convention, which took effect in 1994, though it has applied many of its clauses. Coalter Lathrop, an attorney at the US law firm Sovereign Geographic, told AFP that the US is 'a huge beneficiary of the parallel set of customary international law rules' despite not being a party to UNCLOS. Yuki Iwamura/AFP For instance, the US has one of the largest Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) which gives states sovereignty over maritime areas up to 200 nautical miles (370km) from their coastline - protecting them from foreign fishing boats, among other extractive industries. If the US enjoys the benefits of ocean law, Lathrop argues, 'but then you disregard the other part of the package deal - that the seabed and its minerals in areas beyond national jurisdiction are the common heritage of humankind - that is going to be destabilising, to say the least, for the general legal order of the oceans'. 'US unilateral permitting could lead to the disintegration of a system that has been carefully curated and created by the United States, largely for its own benefit,' he added. The US and Canadian moves sparked an international outcry from ISA member states, including China, whose foreign ministry spokesperson warned it violates international law. ISA secretary general Leticia Carvalho expressed similar concern, saying that 'any unilateral action... sets a dangerous precedent that could destabilise the entire system of global ocean governance'. Jim Watson/AFP The Metals Company does maintain contracts with ISA members like Japan - where it has a partnership with smelting company Pamco. And experts note such ISA member states could invoke their obligation to UNCLOS to enforce maritime law on The Metals Company via these proxies, even if it ultimately receives a permit from the Trump administration. Guy Standing, an economist at the University of London, told AFP: 'It's the most dangerous thing he's done so far,' referring to Trump. If marine laws 'were to come sort of unravelled, you could have a carve up in different parts of the world, with Russia, China and America carving up the Arctic,' Standing said. However, not all scholars in the field are in agreement. James Kraska, a professor of international maritime law at US Naval War College, said 'it's naïve to think the United States has that kind of influence.' 'I just disagree with the people that are saying that it's somehow a legal obligation to comply with a treaty that you never joined,' he told AFP. 'I just can't see any way that it's unlawful. I understand that there's sort of political opposition to it, but I would just distinguish between politics and the law.'
National Post
6 days ago
- Business
- National Post
The CEO of a Vancouver-based company has figured out how to collaborate with Trump
Article content America and China have tapped the brakes on a spiralling tariff war. But there are other points of fierce competition between these two nations that haven't abated — including the race for rare earth metals. In late March, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order to fast-track the mining of critical minerals in a new frontier, the deep sea, a move intended to give America a competitive edge over China. Article content Article content Article content And in an odd twist, it's a Vancouver-based corporation, The Metals Company, that's been lobbying power brokers in Washington to bypass multilateral United Nations conventions and set a unilateral pathway for commercial mining of deep sea minerals. The company has announced its U.S. subsidiary will apply for a U.S. mining permit to harvest mineral nodules lying 5,000 metres deep in the Clarion-Clipperton zone of the Pacific Ocean. Article content Article content Officials at the International Seabed Authority — the UN-backed regulator responsible for setting the rules for deep sea mining in international waters — aren't happy. Trump's decision to revive a 1980-era U.S. mining law that predates the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), a convention the U.S. has not signed or ratified, flies in the face of how the UN prefers to see things done. Article content With the stage set for a showdown between Trump's executive order and UN conventions, I'm curious to find out what Gerard Barron, the CEO of The Metals Company, has to say. Article content Gerard's in Sydney, Australia, when we connect. The public company's first quarter results for 2025 have just been released; The Metals Company shares jumped nearly 83 per cent in April, and the stock is up 180 per cent in 2025. To say Gerard is bullish would be an understatement. With a trillion dollars worth of metals sitting on the seabed floor in their licence areas, Gerard declares, the company should be worth far more than a couple of billion, Canadian. Article content Article content The son of Aussie dairy farmers, Gerard is now a jet-setting entrepreneur splitting his time between London and Dubai, and more recently spending a lot of time lobbying in Washington, D.C., and some time at corporate offices in Toronto. Sporting a black T-shirt and frequently running a hand through his thick hair as he speaks, candidly and confidently, it's not difficult to imagine why this deep sea mining pioneer has been dubbed 'the Elon Musk of Australia.' Gerard bristles at the comparison: 'There is no equivalent to Elon Musk.' But he does confirm the company's vice-chair, Steve Jurvetson, is well connected to Musk.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Why Shares of The Metals Company Are Soaring This Week
The Metals Company is committed to deep-sea mining for minerals used to make batteries, like cobalt and copper. Two catalysts motivated investors to buy shares this week. In the pre-revenue phase of its development, the company represents a speculative investment. 10 stocks we like better than TMC The Metals Company › Extending the 17% rise of last week, shares of The Metals Company (NASDAQ: TMC) continued climbing higher this week. After a positive article about the deep-sea mining company surfaced last weekend, an analyst's positive take on the company inspired the bulls to continue their buying spree. According to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence, shares of The Metals Company have climbed 20.6% from the end of trading last week through the close of Thursday's session. Investors began the week itching to buy The Metals Company stock after reading about the company in a Wall Street Journal article over the weekend. Discussing the lucrative opportunity that deep-sea mining offers for procuring battery minerals like cobalt and copper, the article makes prominent mention of The Metals Company, which filed for deep-sea mining permits in April -- shortly after President Trump's executive order to fortify the nation's supply of critical minerals. The article cites research that pegs the market value of deep-sea minerals at $20 trillion. Before the tide of enthusiasm from the weekend ebbed, a new catalyst for the stock's rise emerged on Tuesday, when investors learned that financial institution H.C. Wainwright had initiated coverage on The Metals Company, rating it a buy and assigning a $5.50 price target. Given the White House support for deep-sea mining, it's unsurprising that The Metals Company stock is rising. But the company is far from even beginning commercial operations, and there's no certainty that they will be profitable if it does. Only those with a high tolerance for risk should consider positions now. Before you buy stock in TMC The Metals Company, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and TMC The Metals Company wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $640,662!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $814,127!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 963% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 168% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join . See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of May 19, 2025 Scott Levine has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Why Shares of The Metals Company Are Soaring This Week was originally published by The Motley Fool Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Globe and Mail
23-05-2025
- Business
- Globe and Mail
Trump's lunge for critical metals could come at a huge environmental cost by churning up the seabed
The Metals Company, a Canadian deep-sea minerals exploration business that trades on Nasdaq, was a penny stock in December. Today, its shares are worth about US$4.40 apiece, giving it a market value of US$1.6-billion even though it has no profits. What happened? Donald Trump is what happened. By now we know that the U.S. President is obsessed with 'critical' minerals, a catch-all term that is generally defined as those minerals considered essential for the latest technologies, among them cobalt for electric-vehicle batteries, gallium for LED lights, and rare earth metals for guided missiles. Mr. Trump knows that China has pretty much locked up the global market for these minerals, including the smelters that cast them into usable products. His 'minerals deal' with Ukraine, signed in April, was billed as a critical metals triumph but seemed more about exploiting fairly abundant metals such as titanium, lithium and graphite that you can find pretty much anywhere, plus resources such as oil, natural gas and coal that are a glut on the market. (The U.S. Geological Survey does not list Ukraine as having any rare earths, a subset of critical minerals). So Mr. Trump's hunt for the most critical of critical metals continued and, for that, he put on his metaphoric bathing trunks, grabbed a scuba tank and plunged underwater. There, at the bottom of the ocean, lay vast tracts of polymetallic nodules the size of potatoes that are stuffed with nickel, cobalt, copper and manganese. But how to extract them from international waters? No problem. He bypassed the United Nations-mandated International Seabed Authority (ISA), which was established in the 1980s under the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea. The ISA, which has legal authority over seabed resources, has issued a few exploration licences but no commercial licences to churn up the seabed and squirt the nodules to the surface. The United States is one of the few countries that is not a member of the ISA but is described by it as a 'reliable observer and significant contributor to the negotiations' of the agency. Mr. Trump's workaround took the form of an executive order last month that saw him direct the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), with the U.S.'s Deep Seabed Hard Resources Minerals Resources Act at its side, to grant permits to mining companies to operate in both international and U.S. waters. The ISA objected but was ignored by the White House. The Metals Company, which had lobbied the Trump administration to grant deep-sea mining rights, cheered and submitted applications for two exploration licences and one commercial recovery permit. They will cover a portion of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone – a seabed plain that spans 4.5 million square kilometres between Hawaii and Mexico. The company's shares soared. In a statement, the Metals Company said it believed its exploration areas contained 15.5 million tonnes of nickel, 12.8 million tonnes of copper, two million tonnes of cobalt and 35 million tonnes of manganese. Gerard Barron, chairman and CEO, said the application for the permits 'marks a major step forward … for America's mineral independence and industrial resurgence.' What is equally true is that it marks a potential major step backward for the health of the oceans. The deep-ocean depths are largely unexplored; they are among the last virgin wildernesses on the planet. Scientists have not catalogued many of the otherworldly creatures found in the cold, dark depths. Recent deep dives with robotic submarines have found what the BBC called a 'living constellation' of animals, from organisms flashing with bioluminescence to a 'walking' fish – actually a sea toad – with googly eyes, bright-red spiky skin and sturdy fins that allow it to crawl on the sea floor. How would these creatures, and thousands of other species, survive the enormous tank-like machines – the biggest weigh about 300 tonnes – that would grind their way along the seabed to scoop up the nodules and shoot them along tubes to the surface? They probably wouldn't. Scientists have warned about noise and light pollution from the machines, sediment plumes from the grinding action, loss of biodiversity, and the release of massive amounts of carbon from the ocean floor. Some 700 marine scientists have signed a petition calling for a 'pause' in the rush to mine the seas until the extent of the environmental damage can be determined. David Attenborough, the English broadcaster and biologist, has urged governments to ban deep-sea mining. A 2023 study by Fauna and Flora International warned that churning up the seabed could cause significant loss of biodiversity and the microbes that store carbon. Batteries for EVs, phones and other products are driving the rush to find critical metals. The demand for batteries is rising fast as the internal combustion engine retreats from the car market. The 'green' transition is laying waste to entire landscapes, from the Indonesian rainforests, where nickel mines are proliferating, to the carbon sinks of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the source of most of the world's cobalt. Strip-mining the oceans is now almost certainly next and could go down as Mr. Trump's darkest legacy.
