Washington, D.C. (November 17, 2025) – As the Trump Administration continues to push to start mining of the deep ocean floor, a new assessment of the technical and economic feasibility of deep sea mining in the American Samoa region casts serious doubt on whether seabed mining has any economic justification or viable future. The report, which is a significant contribution to the global deep-sea mining debate, finds that the approaches of two leading companies dramatically underestimate capital and operating costs and that their operations would likely be unworkable, uneconomic, and ultimately unnecessary over the next 15 years.

The report assesses Impossible Metals’ fleet of autonomous underwater vehicles, and The Metal Company’s tethered crawler system with a vertical riser. Both companies intend to deploy technologies that have never been demonstrated at commercial scale, and plan to do so in the deep ocean - one of the most technologically challenging places to operate on the planet. It is likely to be much harder, slower, and more expensive than their optimistic projections suggest. 

"If investors are betting on deep-sea nodules as the next big mining frontier, they might want to look at the balance sheets of the last companies that tried,” said Michael Barnard, Chief Strategist at TFIE Strategy. “These projects don’t fail because of regulation or protest; they fail because the math never adds up once you include the real costs of ocean operations.”

“Our technoeconomic assessment reveals that seabed mining has significant fundamental challenges which will be very difficult to overcome,” said Lyle Trytten, President of Trytten Consulting Services. “When considering the technical risks and uncertainties which will likely lead to higher capital and operating expenses, a well-supplied market with a defined structure buying ore and selling product rather than toll-processing, and decreasing supply gap forecasts due to both increasing supply and decreasing rate of demand growth, these ventures fail to demonstrate a likely path to rapid commercial viability.”

"This exhaustive techno-economic assessment pulls back the curtain on deep-sea mining and reveals the inconvenient truth: it is an economic boondoggle,” said Miriam Goldstein, Executive Director of the National Ocean Protection Coalition. “Companies are betting on technologies that have never worked at scale and relying on inflated market projections. The case for deep-sea mining collapses under real-world scrutiny, showing it to be an environmentally destructive venture that offers no clear economic or strategic benefit to the American people."

The techno-economic assessment was commissioned by the National Ocean Protection Coalition and conducted by Michael Barnard and Lyle Trytten. Read the full report here.

About NOPC

The National Ocean Protection Coalition (NOPC) includes groups representing national, regional, and local perspectives from across the U.S. and includes Tribal leaders, racial justice advocates, scientists, faith leaders, conservationists, outdoor enthusiasts, fishers and more. Together, we work to create and support marine protected areas (MPAs) – special places in the ocean that, much like national parks on land, serve as a refuge for the wildlife that call these underwater places home and help to ensure a healthy ocean for the benefit of all.