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The Scandinavian kingdom has just authorized mining prospecting on its seabed, rich in rare and precious metals. An announcement that whets the appetite of industrialists, ready to harvest these treasures buried 3,000 meters deep. For good reason, billions of euros are at stake with the exploitation of these minerals, necessary for the manufacture of electric car batteries or solar panels. But this prospecting could prove devastating for ecosystems.
Fifty-five years after the discovery of its first oil deposits, Norway dreams of becoming a pioneer in the industrial exploitation of underwater metals.
On January 9, Parliament authorized by 80 votes to 20 the exploration of an area of 281,000 square kilometers located between the island of Jan Mayen and the Svalbard archipelago. An area which would contain 12 sulphide fields and 27 manganese crust deposits. An underwater Eldorado worth billions. According to the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, the ocean floor is home to three million tonnes of rare earths, 38 million tonnes of copper, lithium, tungsten, magnesium and cobalt, as well as 185 million tonnes of manganese, or nine times annual world production.
Faced with such a vein, several companies have begun to develop autonomous robots and underwater drones capable of collecting these ores at great depths. The company Seabed Solutions thus invested 8 million euros in the purchase of an underwater excavator. Thanks to these tracks and its drilling head, this extraordinary 16-ton machine is capable of digging, sampling and moving over deposits at a depth of 4,000 meters.
“There will be a race for minerals,” predicts Andreas Svanlund, marketing director of Seabed Solutions. “In the coming years, we will need ten times more minerals than we are capable of producing today. If we want to move away from dependence on China, which controls the entire supply chain, we must exploit our resources ourselves.
Enough to worry environmental organizations, who fear the impact of these underwater projects on Arctic ecosystems. Sediment plumes in particular, highly mobile suspended clouds raised by machines during ore extraction, could threaten natural habitats, disrupt biodiversity and lead to chemical modification of the seabed.
In his offices installed in a house on stilts in Bergen, Ruben Oddekalv, director of the Norwegian Environmental Protection Association, intends to lead the charge to ban underwater mines.
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