Deep-sea mining report

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33563, 18 June 1974, Page 17

Deep-sea mining report

(N.Z. Press Assn — Copyright) NEW YORK, June 17. Ore mining in the deep ocean floor may start in two years, and may provide almost a fifth of the world’s nickel within 11 years, a new United Nations study says.

Metals . coming on the world market from the seabed will depress cobalt and manganese prices sharply, and nickel prices slightly. But it will hardly affect copper prices, according to the 92-page report, prepared here for a United Nations conference on sea law which will start on Thursday in Caracas, Venezuela.

Oxides of these metals are found on the ocean floor in

small nodules which can be lifted or pumped to the surface.

The report, written by the United Nations Secretariat, was prompted by a 1970 request from the General Assembly for a study of the. impact that seabed mining outside national limits would have on the economies of developing countries. Though recovering the nodules involves formidable problems, the existing technology can allow the industry to work and nodule mining is expected to be commercially profitable. Potentially commercial deposits exist in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, the report says. Nodules with the highest potential value lie in a belt of the Pacific stretching from below lower California to the Marshall Islands and from Hawaii to Palmyra Island.

Commercial metal production from nodules may begin about 1980, though nodule mining may start as early as 1976.

Once the decision is made to proceed, commercial production can begin within three to five years Six groups are expected to be in operation by 1985. The volume of dry nodules being processed in that year may amount to 15m tonnes.

By 1985, production of nickel from nodules may amount to 18 per cent of world demand.

Copper production from nodules is expected to have a minimum impact on a relatively large, growing and somewhat diffuse market.

Manganese from nodules would depress prices and reduce export earnings of developing producers.