Norway announced on Wednesday the opening of vast areas in the Arctic region for its first seabed mineral licensing round.
The government proposed putting forward 386 blocks in the Arctic as part of the round. The area comprises about 38% of the 280,000 square kilometers approved by the parliament for exploration earlier this year.
The country plans to grant exploration permits in the first half of 2025.
“The world needs minerals for the green transition, and the government wants to explore if it is possible to extract seabed minerals sustainably from the Norwegian continental shelf,” said Terje Aasland, Norway’s minister of energy.
“Environmental considerations are taken into account in all stages of the activities,” Aasland added.
At least two companies have applied for licenses already, as Oslo emphasizes the importance of deep-sea mining the Arctic to increase Europe’s supply of essential rare earth minerals and battery metals such as copper, nickel and manganese.
Mining is not expected to start before 2030.
Environmentalists, however, are challenging the plans in court.
“Researchers have been unanimous; we have too little knowledge about the deep sea, and even just exploring it can have catastrophic consequences for marine life and the vital ecosystem processes we find there,” Gytis Blazevicius, leader of the Norwegian environmental organization Nature and Youth, told Bloomberg.
“In the future, we will look back at 2024 as the fateful year when we could have made the right choice.”
Greenpeace said on Wednesday the proposed blocks constituted a “shockingly large” area given previous warnings from scientists regarding the potential impact on fragile ecosystems.
The European Parliament GreenDeal chief Maros Sefcovic said in March that the European Union would monitor the process. Norway is not a member of the bloc.
(With files from Bloomberg and Reuters)
