(Nuku’alofa) Canadian company The Metals Company announced Monday night that it will launch a deep-sea mining project in the South Pacific in 2026, while pledging to overcome criticism that has marred the environmentally controversial project.
“If all goes to plan, we’re still talking about 2026,” its chief executive Gerard Barron said on the sidelines of the Pacific Islands Forum summit in Tonga.
Through a subsidiary backed by the tiny island nation of Nauru, The Metals Company hopes to open a vast offshore economic zone to harvest polymetallic rocks, also known as nodules, from the seabed.
Initial trials are already underway, and The Metals Company said it would submit its plans to the international regulator early next year.
The nodules are loaded with manganese, copper, cobalt or nickel, metals used in the manufacture of electric vehicle batteries.
These are mineral formations that develop with the help of microbes over millions of years, particularly around cores of organic matter such as a shark tooth or whale bones.
Along with Nauru, Tonga and the Cook Islands are at the forefront of the exploitation of polymetallic nodules, unlike Palau, Fiji and Samoa, which are opposed and insist that environmental issues be studied before projects begin.
A scientific study, partly funded by The Metals Company and published in early 2024, demonstrates that nodule mining can potentially disrupt the carbon cycle.
But Mr Barron dismisses the findings as “misleading”.
Nauru, which has 12,500 inhabitants in an area of approximately 20 km2claims a mining exploration area of more than 70,000 km2 in an area called the Clarion-Clipperton fracture zone.
In the past, phosphate mining made Nauru one of the richest countries in the world in terms of GDP per capita. But that windfall has dried up, leaving the island with a barren, hollowed-out landscape.