The Interior Department said it would review a new proposal for operations off the coast of American Samoa.
- The U.S. Interior Department will evaluate a permit request from Impossible Metals to mine critical minerals from the Pacific seabed near American Samoa, following a Trump executive order aimed at fast-tracking such projects.
- The company aims to use lower-impact technology to harvest valuable metals like cobalt and nickel, essential for defense and clean energy, from a region previously under a moratorium.
- Deep-sea mining, if done responsibly, can reduce dependence on foreign-controlled mineral supply chains (namely China’s) while strengthening U.S. energy security and industrial capacity. However, the years-long permitting process shows why America needs serious permitting reform to achieve true energy and resource abundance.
Read more in The New York Times here.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of C3.
