A New Technical Frontier in Our Oceans

The Norwegian industry and academia met last week in Oslo to establish a national association and resource group for deep sea mining.

Exploration of minerals from the deep oceans is an emerging industry which requires competence and technology beyond our existing knowledge, and there are valuable minerals worth billions of USD in our deep oceans.

Based on our industrial knowledge and most advanced technology from the oil and gas sector, Norway is among the very few countries best positioned to develop the deep sea mining industry.

There are still many “unknowns” and uncertainties like the possible environmental effects or which technical solutions are neccessary to develop a sustainable industry as this is indeed uncharted territory.

National Association for Deep Sea Mining

The Norwegian industry and academia met last week in Oslo to establish a national association and resource group for deep sea mining.

The University of Bergen and NTNU are the leading Universities in Norway in this field and together with industry leading companies like Swire Seabed, Equinor, TechnipFMC and DNV GL, GCE Subsea has founded a national association for deep sea mining and the following persons have been elected as a resource group by the stakeholders:

• Kjetil Skaugset and Emil Vindenes from Equinor
• Ingrid Schjølberg from NTNU Trondheim
• Jens Laugesen from DNV GL
• Tim Crome from TechnipFMC
• Lars Trellevik from the University of Bergen
• Roger Andersen from Swire Seabed
• Owe Hagesæther from GCE Subsea

The resource group will work to strengthen the cooperation between industry, researchers, authorities and other stakeholders in the area of development of deep sea mineral resources.

Furthermore, the resource group will promote innovation related to exploration for, and exploitation of, mineral deposits in the deep sea. The group will moreover promote Norwegian industry and competence related to the field internationally and act like an advisory group for the Norwegian government

Exploration and Industry Regulations

Norway is about to finalise a new law, regulating the exploration and exploitation of marine mineral resources and the management responsibilities of these resources have been issued to the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, with operational responsibility given to the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD). NPD recently announced the first competition for collecting geological data, marking the start of a new era.