Oilfield Technology Leads the Way in Pursuit of Undersea Metals Vital to Energy Transition

Abstract

A carbon-free world and green economy have a lot riding on the future of electricity generation and storage. As the world moves away from hydrocarbons and toward electricity to power everything from cars to the factories that make them and beyond, there is yet another crucial hurdle to clear. To meet the expected electric future for vehicles alone, it will take more manganese, cobalt, nickel, copper, and lithium than we as a planet are currently producing. These elements are the building blocks for the batteries that power the electrified future—and they are finite. Supply concerns have already hit automakers as more and more look to grow their electric vehicle (EV) footprints. Representatives from Tesla, Ford, and Mercedes-Benz were among the delegates at a recent metals and mining conference in Florida—a gathering usually attended by metals producers. The auto managers were in attendance to learn more about potential obstacles to their supply chains when it comes to lithium, nickel, and cobalt, all critical battery components. An answer to the supply conundrum may lie in a most curious place—the ocean floor. Specifically, in deposits of polymetallic nodules—black lumps of mineral matter about the size of a potato that are strewn throughout certain areas of the Earth’s seabeds. These nodules are present in deposits across the globe, but mostly in the Pacific and Indian oceans. The existence of these nodules has been known for decades. In fact, it would be the idea of deep-sea mining for manganese nodules that would act as cover for a Cold War expedition known as Project Azorian, a CIA-led mission in the Pacific Ocean that would use a converted drilling rig—the Glomar Explorer—to retrieve a sunken Soviet submarine in the early 1970s. The mission was a partial success as only a portion of the crippled vessel was retrieved. In the North Pacific between Hawaii and Mexico, there is an area called the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) that is estimated to hold a field comprised of 21 billion dry tons of nodules at water depths ranging from 4 to 6 km. The CCZ is broken up into licenses, much like what is common for offshore oil and gas exploration. “The amount of metals in the nodules themselves surpasses anything on land—far more nickel, far more cobalt, far more manganese, and a fair amount of copper as well,” said Rory Usher with The Metals Company, a deep-sea miner with licenses in the CCZ. “In the face of massive resource demand and constrained supply, we think this abundant and potentially lower-impact alternative is something that absolutely has to be responsibly considered. And through our extensive deep-sea science program to provide definitive answers as to the impacts, that’s exactly what’s been done.”