The public rarely pays much attention to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. It is housed in a suite of offices under the Interior Department and oversees the leasing of federal offshore waters for mineral and energy development. This type of regulatory action is typically overlooked until something goes wrong, but it is mentioned in trade journals. The lack of widespread coverage of what BOEM is now doing appears to be a serious oversight considering the scope.
In addition to pushing several Pacific territories and Alaskan waters toward auction and starting sand dredging lease processes off Virginia, the agency is concurrently advancing the first commercial-scale deep-sea mining licenses in five distinct U.S. ocean zones. The total area of the ocean floor that is now being assessed is close to 875,000 square kilometers. No one has ever engaged in commercial deep-sea mining. The United States is going to attempt to do it simultaneously in five locations.
The strategic justification is distinct and deserving of careful consideration on its own terms. Polymetallic nodules, which are potato-sized mineral deposits dispersed throughout the abyssal plain and rich in nickel, cobalt, manganese, and copper—elements necessary for the production of electric car batteries and defense-related products—are found on the seabed in these zones.
Most of these vital minerals are currently imported by the United States, primarily from supply networks that pass through China or nations that are politically close to China. The claim that domestic seabed exploitation would lessen that reliance is real. The minerals are indeed present. What happens to the ecosystems on top of them when they are extracted on a commercial scale is the question, and whether the answer to that question is sufficiently known to move forward at the rate BOEM is now suggesting.
With area designation finished and a lease auction scheduled for August 2026, the American Samoa zone is the most advanced. The Request for Information for the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a group of Pacific islands that most Americans couldn’t find on a map, has been made public and is set to go up for auction in the fall of 2026. Early in 2026, Alaska started the deep-sea mineral leasing procedure, with sales anticipated for 2027.
The Virginia procedure is undergoing a separate regulatory examination in response to an unsolicited lease request for coastal sand dredging as opposed to mineral extraction. Parallel to the Pacific programs, seabed extraction in the Arctic Ocean offshore Alaska is being assessed. What’s remarkable is the simultaneity of this. These trials are not conducted in a sequential manner. These are simultaneous pledges to a technology with no large-scale commercial precedence.
It is not hypothetical alarmism to be concerned about the environment. On sediment levels said to be millions of years old, polymetallic nodule fields are home to populations of organisms that have evolved to survive in almost complete darkness, in icy water, and with very little food. Many of these organisms are unknown to science. It is anticipated that the disruption plumes produced by nodule collection equipment will spread hundreds of kilometers from the extraction location, suffocating seabed life over vastly broader areas than the lease blocks.
Particular concerns over consultation procedures and the connection between projected extraction zones and traditional ocean territories have been voiced by indigenous rights organizations in the Pacific regions. It’s still unclear if BOEM’s regulatory review procedures were intended to handle this kind of involvement or if they’re being stretched to fit a type of industrial activity for which they weren’t intended.
There is a sense that something other than confidence that the science is ready is driving the pace as five zones go forward at the same time. There is a genuine battle for vital minerals with China, and this puts pressure on the schedule.
However, the ocean floor that BOEM is getting ready to open to commercial extraction has not been disturbed in geological time, and if that disturbance begins at the scale being considered across 875,000 square kilometers, there won’t be a clear response to the question of what was lost. The map that no one showed you is now available to the public. It won’t be evident until long after the first machines hit the bottom if the subsequent leases will be wise choices.
