The Rising Influence of Rising Affluence

[OakesCS]

I doubt it. Thoughts of harvesting Mn nodules goes back to 1970s. It’s no where near as simple as harvesting potatoes and the environmental orgs would spike projects before it made it out of the proposal stage. Other currently forming sea floor ore deposits, eg Red Sea basins, have on-shore analogs that are cheaper to mine (eg kuroko type deposits). There are some very metal rich geothermal brine systems that are periodically pursued at commercial scale (there’s an active Li project in SoCal) but I don’t think any ever turned a profit. Those should be far simpler than sea floor mining.

Somewhat related: SLB recently started a “new energy” venture w Ashok Belani at helm (I think was long overdue demotion step on way to forced retirement but he claims otherwise). This venture pursues Li production services as well as geothermal energy but in typically clueless fashion - considers them to be unrelated and treats them as entirely separate business units within the division. This is because they deal w legacy geothermal projects in places like Philippines and Indonesia which don’t have associated Li. The continuation of minor, low margin business as part of a supposedly forward thinking business unit while ignoring commonalities between subunits doesn’t strike me as a recipe for innovation and success. But Belani has successfully pillaged the company for years so what do I know.

There are some near shore Au and Ti deposits that are mined.