Victor Vescovo, one of the presenters at Wednesday evening’s forum on deep sea mining has urged that American Samoa not rush into making a decision about deep sea mining but to do its own research. He said a lot of promises are being made but from his own experience as someone who has done underwater exploration and as an industrial investor and owner of a mining company the promises of deep sea mining are “simply not going to work.”
He said making money is the main factor that’s driving the debate on seabed mining.
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Vescovo said what Impossible Metals is planning to do in waters of American Samoa has already been tried in Papua New Guinea. Ten to 15 years ago a company, Nautilus burned millions of dollars in deep sea mining in Papua New Guinea and it failed, causing damage to large swaths of ocean in the process.
Vescovo took apart Impossible Metals’ financial projections from the harvesting of poly metallic nodules from the ocean floor, saying their numbers were based on market price of the two main metals, cobalt and nickel, going back five years, not the current value. He said their numbers were higher by 62% than the current market value for these metals.
He said that the price of cobalt and nickel has been sliding over the last five years and will continue to drop because the demand has been replaced by cheaper metals used in electrical vehicle batteries such as iron and phosphorus.
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Vescovo said the equipment that Impossible Metals would be using has never been tested in waters deeper than 2,000 meters. He said operating the equipment in depths of 4,000 meters has never been done before, and according to him the machines will not be able to stand the pressure and there will be breakdowns operating 24 hours in corrosive salt water. So the profitability of the operation is affected.
While the Impossible Metals presentation said there would be minimal impact on the ocean and marine life Vescovo said the equipment will kick up silt.
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Vescovo made the following recommendations:
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He also urged that American Samoa get a legal agreement to ensure payment of the share of profits because there is currently no legal requirement for profit sharing.
Taotasi Archie Soliai asked Vescovo if he didn’t have a conflict of interest because of competing interest as a venture capitalist. The presenter said he was investing in asteroid mining which is far more valuable than sea mining, and without the environmental impacts. So he didn’t have a conflict of interest. Nina Tuaau Claude said she was afraid of the impacts of deep sea mining on the future generation and she’s not too concerned about the money but wanted American Samoa to be safe. Vescovo said he wanted American Samoa to be safe and also be rich but he didn’t think deep sea mining was the way to achieve this.
