Norway hits the brakes on mining the Arctic Ocean — for now

Over the last decade and a half, deep-sea mining has captured worldwide attention as a potential source for minerals like manganese, nickel, and cobalt that are needed to make electric vehicle batteries and other technology in support of the global energy transition. 

While the most coveted seabed area for potential mining — the vast and relatively flat Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the Pacific Ocean — is under international jurisdiction, parts of the world’s oceans controlled by individual nations have also attracted interest. Some countries, like Papua New Guinea, have taken the step of issuing exploration contracts. France, by contrast, passed an outright ban on mining in its waters. (In Papua New Guinea, reports recently emerged of illegal mining in its waters.) Other countries are still debating what to do.

Since 2017, Norway has been considering the possibility of mining in the part of the Arctic Ocean set aside as its exclusive economic zone — specifically in an area comprising over 100,000 square miles, about the size of Italy. The resources of interest there include two coveted deposits: polymetallic sulfides, which are ores that form around hydrothermal vents, and cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts, or accretions of metal along the sides of underwater mountains.

Earlier this year, in January, a proposal to allow companies to survey Norway’s waters and assess its resource potential sailed through Parliament with an 80-20 vote. Until that point, seabed mining had not been a widely publicized issue in Norway, but the vote prompted a groundswell of civil society opposition. 

“To large parts of Norwegian society, this came as a surprise when the Norwegian government suddenly announced that they were going for deep-sea mining, and it sparked a lot of outrage,” said Haldis Tjeldflaat Helle, a deep-sea mining campaigner at Greenpeace Nordic. Environmental organizations found themselves in an unusual alliance with the country’s fishing industry, which organized against the mining plan because of the threat it posed to fish stocks (seafood is Norway’s largest export after oil and gas). There was also opposition from Norwegian trade unions and a resolution passed in the European Parliament that criticized the plan.

In the fall, during the course of routine parliamentary proceedings, the Socialist Left, a small political party with just eight seats in Parliament, threatened to withhold support for the annual budget unless the government — a minority coalition between the Labour Party and the Centre Party — dropped its plans for the permit-licensing program for the year ahead.

This caused weeks of “intense” negotiations between the parties, according to Lars Haltbrekken, an environmental activist and Socialist Left parliamentarian. The argument in some ways reflected competing visions of how Norway should position its image to the world: “‘If we now stop this process, companies will think of Norway as an unstable country to make business in’ — that was the argument from the government. What we argued was that the environmental consequences of doing this might be so huge that it’s also a risk for Norway’s reputation around the world,” Haltbrekken said.

On December 1, the plan was finally reversed. The Socialist Left didn’t put a full stop to deep-sea mining in Norway, but its maneuvering delayed the granting of exploration permits by at least a year and could make a future resumption of licensing approval unlikely. “I think that when we have stopped it for one year, we will be able to stop it for another year, and another year, and another year,” Haltbrekken said. The prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, described the latest outcome as merely a “postponement.” 

In what some observers saw as an indication of just how uncertain deep-sea mining is as a commercial venture, only three mining companies, all small Norwegian startups, had plans to apply for the permits. One of them, Green Minerals, said in a press release last week that it “expects a slightly accelerated timeline” for licensing approval under next year’s newly elected government, allowing the company to maintain its timeline of a first exploration cruise in 2026 and the beginning of mining operations before 2030.

Norway’s waters are far more remote and harder to operate heavy machinery in than others being explored for deep-sea mining. “The weather conditions in the Norwegian Sea are very different than the ones in the Pacific,” said Helle, of Greenpeace Nordic. “We are talking about an area that is very far north. Most of it is above the Arctic Circle, close to Svalbard, and this is an area where you have a lot of high waves, you have a lot of wind, and you can get temperatures around freezing, and so it is very challenging doing operations.”

Norway does have a history of industrial operations in the Arctic — its primary export is oil, much of which is drilled offshore, though much closer to its shores than the proposed mining area. The country is at “the forefront of marine and deep-sea technology,” said Thomas Dahlgren, a Swedish biologist at the Norwegian Research Centre who studies deep-sea life. “They have Kongsberg,” he continued, referring to the defense contractor and maritime technology developer. “They have 50 years of experience in pumping up oil and gas from the seafloor and so on, and they have all the wealth they built up by exploiting fossil fuels, which they are now eager to put to work in some other industrial activity.”

Aside from the technical challenges, some conservationists worry that mining for underwater sulfides could endanger a delicate and little-known part of the planet before scientists have had the chance to learn its secrets. Hydrothermal vents — underwater geysers that spout superheated, mineral-rich water from the Earth’s crust — were discovered in 1977. Scientists were astonished to find that the vents supported entire underwater ecosystems, with species found nowhere else, and in the decades since their discovery, some have speculated that these environments may hold clues to the origin of life on Earth — and even the possibility of life on other planets. The total area on Earth containing active vent ecosystems is estimated to be around 50 square kilometers (less than 20 square miles).

Deep-sea mining proponents only suggest mining around hydrothermal vents that are extinct, or inactive — no longer spouting heated water, but still surrounded by valuable metals. But Matthew Gianni, co-founder and policy advisor of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, said that the easiest inactive vents for miners to locate tend to be in so-called vent fields, in proximity to active vents, which could be disturbed by mining. “If you punch a hole into an inactive deposit, you can change the hydrology of the venting system. You can basically shut down an active vent and everything living on it basically goes dead eventually,” Gianni said.

The debate over deep-sea mining has touched on a contradiction in Norway’s political identity. It’s a country deeply tied to the ocean, with a proud culture of environmental stewardship, while also being heavily materially invested in the extraction of the ocean’s riches — and, like other petrostates, eager for an economic replacement in the event that the world’s appetite for Norway’s oil eventually dies.

“I’m not saying we should do it,” said Steinar Løve Ellefmo, a geoscientist who facilitates an interdisciplinary pilot program at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology where researchers study deep-sea mining solutions in collaboration with public officials, nongovernmental organizations, and commercial stakeholders including Green Minerals, the mining startup. “I’m saying we should investigate whether we can do it as a contribution to meeting the demand for minerals and metals” — adding that their extraction “has the potential to limit or reduce our dependence on petroleum-based energy production.”

Haltbrekken, the Socialist Left parliamentarian, said he accepts the need for mineral mining, broadly speaking. “We need minerals, we do, to stop climate change. But we do need to do more recycling of the minerals that we already have. And I think even though we do have a lot of conflicts and a lot of environmental disasters connected to the mining industry on land, it’s easier for us to control and have strict environmental regulations on mining on land than mining two to three thousand meters down in the sea,” he said.

“Of course, should we do more on recycling?” Ellefmo said. “But that will not really do the trick. It will contribute, yes, no question, and we should put more effort into it. We should do more on onshore mining for sure. We should do something on your and my consumption for sure. But at the same time, I think we should be allowed to investigate whether [deep-sea mining] could be a good idea. And that includes, of course, understanding the environmental impact if we were to do it.”

Fundamentally, the debate has an epistemological character: The only thing everyone seems to agree on is how little is known about the deep ocean or what the effects of mining there would be. But for opponents of mining, this ignorance is what makes the idea of mining a hubristic folly, while others see the fact of what we don’t know as the motivation for permitting exploration of the deep sea — in the interest of science.

But, as Dahlgren, the Swedish biologist, said, “It would be naive to think that the research and science required to understand the baselines would appear without this industrial interest. Society will not pay for it.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Norway hits the brakes on mining the Arctic Ocean — for now on Dec 13, 2024.