A year after President Donald Trump signed an executive order promising to create a deep-sea mining industry from scratch, the pitch from companies and the pace from regulators have intensified, according to a new Associated Press review. AP said businesses have raised millions of dollars from investors, stock prices have risen, and federal regulators have moved to speed up the permitting pipeline. The administration is also evaluating possible lease sales, with parts of the seafloor from American Samoa to Alaska considered for auction this summer and through the fall, AP reported.
AP’s report describes deep-sea mining as a long-anticipated commercial shift for the United States: the company said the U.S. may soon consider granting permission for commercial mining in international waters, something that has never been done. But the report also lays out doubts that could slow or reshape the effort, pointing to company histories that include legal disputes, uncertainties about capabilities, and major open questions about whether the minerals can be processed and refined at scale.
AP said the minerals companies seek vary depending on location. The most widely prized ores described for the deep seafloor are fist-shaped rocks called polymetallic nodules, formed over millions of years and described as containing high grades of manganese, copper, nickel and cobalt, with smaller amounts of rare earth elements. Scientists, AP said, estimate trillions of nodules lie on the international seabed between Mexico and Hawaii. Nearer to shore, companies have proposed dredging ocean sands for materials including titanium, zirconium and phosphorites.
The report traces the administration’s push to Trump’s April 2025 executive order, which AP said hailed seafloor minerals as vital to U.S. prosperity and trade independence from China and directed agencies to expedite permitting. AP said two agencies would enforce rules: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. AP also noted both agencies have limited precedent—NOAA has never approved a commercial seabed mining project, and BOEM’s experience extends only to a short-lived mining effort in California waters more than 60 years ago.
AP reported that in June, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced a mandate for Interior staff to “speed up” the development of critical minerals offshore. According to AP, the agency later said it was evaluating seabed mining in waters of Alaska, Virginia, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands, and it plans a first lease sale as early as August, based on a budget proposal. AP also said NOAA has shortened the timeline for companies pursuing commercial permits and targets processing 16 applications next fiscal year.
AP said the companies seeking access include firms with backgrounds in other offshore ventures and new startups. AP described The Metals Company as a long-seen front-runner and said the firm expects, if granted a permit, to mine the seafloor commercially before the end of next year. AP said the company has tested equipment in deep-water conditions by hauling up 3,000 metric tons of nodules during a 2022 trial. AP also said CEO Gerard Barron has close ties to the Trump administration and told AP he was in the White House the day Trump signed the executive order and that since then he has been invited to speak at three congressional hearings, while a company spokesperson told AP the firm had no unfair advantages and is positioned to address U.S. priorities after 15 years of preparation and testing.
AP also described Odyssey Marine Exploration, which formed in the 1990s with a mission to find sunken treasure, and said the company pivoted to seabed minerals after a long dispute tied to a shipwreck discovered in 2007 and claimed by the government of Spain. AP said BOEM in December announced that Odyssey had requested the agency begin the regulatory process to consider mining off the coast of Virginia. Another company, Impossible Metals, AP said is pursuing nodules near American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands despite “growing outcry” from local residents and leaders, and AP said the company describes itself as the most environmentally friendly deep-sea mining firm.
Beyond the companies AP described in more detail, the report said other firms are also seeking U.S. permission, including American Metal Resources, SeaX, Deep Sea Minerals Corp., and Deep Sea Rare Minerals, which AP said planned to change its name to Eco Minerals this week. The AP review emphasized that the rapid build-out of interest and capital depends not only on permitting, but on whether companies can demonstrate workable operations and follow-through on promises.
On the business side, AP said analysts and investors question the economic merit of deep-sea mining, given alternatives that are already available on land. AP reported that Ian Lange, a professor of mineral economics at the Colorado School of Mines, said deep-sea mining advocates appear to overlook more affordable mineral sources and raised questions about demand strength, citing examples that include copper mines in Michigan and Wyoming that are fully permitted but inactive and a cobalt mine idled in Idaho. AP also said a review of The Metals Company’s project economics includes the company’s own forecast that it would break even in its eighth year of commercial seabed mining—an assessment that, AP said, would align with the year the company forecast its mineral reserves would be “all mined.” Mining consultant Steven Emerman, AP reported, criticized the premise, saying “No one goes into a project saying, ‘In the best-case scenario, we’ll break even.’”
AP said The Metals Company responded that it had completed mining plans and seafloor surveys for the first eight years of the project and that surveying, sampling and analyzing additional seafloor minerals were better handled once the project is underway. AP said the company also argued at least three land-based mines would be needed to produce the four minerals existing in polymetallic nodules and that this mix makes the project resilient to economic headwinds and changes in demand. Still, AP’s broader review focused on the risk that financial and operational assumptions have not been fully resolved.
The report also highlighted processing and supply-chain challenges, noting that despite Trump’s focus on trade independence, the U.S. currently has no major processing facilities for nickel, manganese or cobalt. AP said companies in the near term would likely rely on existing supply chains abroad and that The Metals Company has explored processing in Japan, South Korea and Indonesia. AP warned that reliance on foreign partners could raise legal issues because many countries engaged in deep-sea mining are bound by commitments to the International Seabed Authority, which could expose those partners to potential legal challenges if they help the U.S. tap the global seabed.
In AP’s summary of the picture, the rapid increase in activity and regulator momentum may point toward commercial breakthroughs, but the report underscored that major uncertainties remain unanswered—from how minerals will be processed and refined to whether the economics can withstand real-world constraints. The executive-order push has accelerated the pathway, AP reported, yet the industry’s next steps depend on decisions and performance that have not been tested at the scale that commercial mining would require.