Canada's TMC to apply for deep sea mining licence this year, chief exec says

By David Stanway

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Canada's The Metals Company plans to apply for a licence to extract minerals from the ocean floor before the end of this year, its chief executive told Reuters, as nations gather in Jamaica to thrash out new rules to minimise environmental risks.

The United Nations' International Seabed Authority (ISA) is currently meeting in Kingston, Jamaica to negotiate a draft "mining code" that will regulate the collection of "polymetallic nodules" and other deep sea deposits.

Negotiators have been racing to ensure that formal rules are in place before mining activities begin. Those rules are now expected to be completed next year.

"The guidance we told the market is that we would lodge (our application) after the July (ISA) session," said Gerard Barron, TMC's chief executive.

"We see no reason to change that. From our perspective, what we're looking for out of the current session is continual movement towards finalising the regulations."

The 36-member ISA council is meeting until July 26.

TMC's bid to become the first company to gain approval to develop deep sea minerals has been controversial. Environmental groups are calling for all activities to be banned, warning that industrial operations on the ocean floor could cause irreversible biodiversity loss.

But TMC says extracting nodules from the ocean floor is far less damaging than terrestrial mining, and will boost supplies of elements like nickel and cobalt that are considered vital for the global energy transition.

TMC, sponsored by the Pacific state of Nauru, invoked the so-called "two-year rule" in 2021, a provision of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) that allows mining applications to be submitted within two years, whether the mining code has been finalised or not.

"There has been tremendous progress in the time since we lodged that two-year notice, and it does provide us with legal cover that we can lodge that application at any time," said Barron.

Once it has been submitted, the application will undergo a review expected to take one year.

"We said we would like the regulations to be there by the time we start, but it is not a requirement," he said, adding that draft regulations already ensure mining is done responsibly.

As many as 27 countries have backed calls for a pause in deep sea mining activities, and this month, Hawaii became the fourth U.S. Pacific state to ban mining in its territorial waters.

"What we see are a number of states signing on to the notion that we don't want to see any exploitation before the regulations are in place," said Barron. "Our response to that is, same here, so let's get on and get them completed."

(Reporting by David Stanway; Editing by Michael Perry)