U.S. Needs Stronger Regulatory Oversight of Deep-Sea Mining

In 2024, Impossible Metals, a seabed mining company, asked the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to conduct a lease sale for polymetallic nodules in federally managed waters offshore American Samoa. As Director of BOEM at that time, I rejected the request. I believed there needed to be collaboration with the people of American Samoa before moving forward.

Shortly after this exchange, the American Samoan government issued a moratorium on deep-sea mining in its territorial waters, citing threats to marine ecosystems and subsistence practices, and the lack of sufficient scientific information and technological development that would help understand the scope of seabed mining’s potential impacts.

A year later, Impossible Metals resubmitted its request to the new administration, and BOEM is now racing to conduct what would be the first of its kind sale for an untested form of development in the middle of the ocean.

Neither BOEM nor its sister agency, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), which shares responsibility overseeing critical mineral development on the 3.2 billion acres of the U.S. Outer and Extended Continental Shelf, is ready for this activity.

Our collective knowledge of what lies on the seafloor amounts to a drop in an ocean-sized bucket. We have mapped less than 30% and explorers have seen less than 0.001% of the deep seafloor.

Scientists suspect there are thousands of ocean species yet to be discovered and view the ocean as the very “engine that controls the overall climate.” All of which makes rushing to mine critical minerals there especially jarring.

Much has been written about international efforts to draft a regulatory structure for critical mineral exploitation in areas beyond national jurisdiction. Less well-known are details about how BOEM and BSEE will oversee this activity in U.S. waters.

There are existing regulations governing the development of “minerals other than oil, gas, and sulfur,” but they are decades old and have never been used to regulate development of any kind, much less entirely new techniques in an area we know very little about.

Questions about how deep-sea mining will proceed in practice abound.

• Will BOEM collaborate with indigenous groups before leasing?
• How will BOEM set royalty rates – at a discount to spur development, or higher to ensure a fair return to taxpayers and an appropriate standard for financially capable operators? (BOEM suggests the former).
• What conditions will BOEM impose to satisfy the current regulation’s vague and illusory requirement to protect the environment? (Interior suggests skipping usual review processes altogether).
• How will BOEM determine that an operator has the technical expertise to engage in a never-before-undertaken activity in the deepest parts of the ocean?
• How will BOEM address the regulation’s lack of adequate financial assurance requirements, which would ensure that taxpayers aren’t saddled with future cleanup costs when mining activities end?
• What standards will operators have to meet in their emergency plans?
• How will BSEE inspect the construction and operation of offshore facilities located over 4,000 miles from the closest BSEE office?
• How will recent significant job losses at BOEM and BSEE ensure effective oversight?

Before I left BOEM in January, we launched a process to modernize the regulations. The process would address these and many more questions about how to ensure that deep-sea mining takes place safely and responsibly – a goal that should be shared by communities, regulators, and industry alike.

Interior now instead suggests they will be streamlining what are already bare-bones, vague, decades-old rules to get to leasing faster. Even setting aside the paucity of baseline science about this area of the ocean, moving forward without a strong regulatory structure is charting a course to shipwreck.   

Elizabeth Klein

Director of Domestic Policy Programs, Penn Washington

Elizabeth Klein is the Director of Domestic Policy Programs at Penn Washington. She previously served as the Director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management in the Department of the Interior.