By Elizabeth Claire Alberts
The deep-sea mining industry could launch in the near future in U.S federal waters. Yet legal experts and former government officials warn that the regulations that would govern this industry are outdated and lack important oversight provisions.
In April 2025, the Trump administration signaled its intention to enter the global race to mine the deep sea when it released an executive order calling for the development of the industry. Following the administration’s direction, in April 2026 the U.S Department of the Interior (DOI) announced its plans to hold a series of seabed lease sales over the course of this year and into early next. The first one is slated for August in American Samoa, with subsequent lease sales planned for the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) and Alaska. If these go forward, they could mark the first commercial lease processes for deep-sea mining anywhere in the world.
Critics say deep-sea mining could cause large-scale and irreversible damage to the marine environment, and some governments in areas slated for leasing have even taken steps to ban deep-sea mining. In 2024, the governor of American Samoa enacted a moratorium on seabed mining from its territorial waters, which extend 3 nautical miles (5.6 kilometers) from its shorelines. And this month, the governor of Guam, a self-governing territory that shares its exclusive economic zone with the CNMI, signed a bill into law that banned deep-sea mining in its nearshore waters and prohibited the use of its port, a vital hub for the Western Pacific region, for seabed mining activities. Opponents also argue that the U.S government is rushing the process to initiate these lease sales.
Supporters of the industry, including representatives from deep-sea mining companies, say it would be minimally invasive and procure critical minerals, and that development is proceeding at an appropriate pace.
Tony Romeo, the CEO of a newly formed deep-sea mining company based in South Carolina called Eco Minerals, pointed out that the U.S has been developing its interest in the deep-sea mining industry since the 1980s. “From an industry perspective, this has been such a slow process,” he told Mongabay.
“At some point somebody’s got to flip the switch and say, ‘Either let’s do this, or we’re not,’” Romeo added. “And that’s what’s happened. Somebody said, ‘All right, we can go ahead now.’”
Romeo said his company is interested in mining in all three areas the U.S plans to auction and could begin commercial extraction within the next two to three years.
But as the industry inches closer to reality, experts say the U.S government’s regulatory framework for mining in federal waters is failing to keep pace. For instance, they note that existing regulations include few requirements for environmental safeguards, financial accountability, or proof that companies can safely operate in the deep ocean.
‘They’re very bare bones’
The deep-sea mining industry’s ambitions extend beyond U.S waters. Historically, much of the focus has been on the seabed in international waters. There, the industry is overseen by the multilateral UN-affiliated International Seabed Authority (ISA), which has already issued 31 exploration contracts. Yet questions remain about the rules that would govern commercial deep-sea mining, in areas both within and beyond national jurisdiction.
The ISA has been working since 2014 to finalise a mining code for commercial deep-sea mining, but the regulations remain unfinished. Major sticking points include establishing environmental standards, determining how benefits from seabed resources would be distributed, and deciding whether the rules should apply to all forms of deep-sea mining or mainly to polymetallic nodule extraction.
The U.S, however, is moving ahead under long-established domestic legal frameworks. In international waters, it relies on the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act (DSHMRA), a 1982 law created as an interim measure ahead of the implementation of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). In federal waters, any future seabed mineral extraction would be governed by the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA), a 1953 law that regulates offshore resource development on the U.S. outer continental shelf and includes provisions for offshore mineral prospecting.
The U.S outer continental shelf refers to all submerged lands, subsoils and seabed that extend from the nation’s shorelines, and covers approximately 1.3 billion hectares (3.2 billion acres), an area about 40 percent bigger than the land mass of the U.S. (In 2023, the U.S expanded the boundaries of the U.S continental shelf by 100 million hectares, or nearly 250 million acres.)
While marine minerals were referenced in the original 1953 version of OCSLA, the law was primarily drafted with oil and gas development in mind, rather than deep-sea mining, according to Elizabeth Klein, who served as the director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) from 2023 to 2025 and is now a Washington, D.C.-based attorney. During her tenure at BOEM, the U.S agency currently overseeing deep-sea mining in federal waters, efforts were underway to modernize the rules, though the process was not completed, Klein said.
“They’re very bare bones,” Klein said about the existing regulations.
“I would describe them as a ‘skeletal structure’ … and they largely focus on that lease sale process and the process to get a permit to actually develop a project. What they don’t include are provisions that speak to what requirements we might expect of a company engaged in this type of activity.”
Klein said the current regulations lack provisions requiring companies to demonstrate their fitness to operate, or “financial assurance” requirements outlining responsibility in the event of environmental damage or bankruptcy. They also lack “specificity around how we will ensure environmental protection,” she said. Klein added that similar shortcomings exist in regulations governing other industries overseen by BOEM, including oil and gas.
Beyond the regulations, Klein said she doesn’t believe BOEM has personnel who are “steeped in knowledge about the technical aspects of deep-sea mining” and that it’s “unclear what the agency is currently doing to build that expertise.”
As Mongabay previously reported, a spokesperson for BOEM said the DOI would ensure that “appropriate resources and expertise are in place to meet all statutory and regulatory responsibilities.” The agency didn’t, however, respond to Mongabay’s questions about the provisions of the regulations or staff expertise.
‘Definitely not modernisation’
In February, BOEM published a series of proposed “administrative revisions” to the OCSLA regulatory framework in the Federal Register. In a press release announcing the proposals, BOEM described them as an effort to “eliminate unnecessary provisions, revise others for clarity, and facilitate timely prospecting, leasing, and operations.”
Klein described many of the proposed revisions as “underwhelming procedural or ministerial changes.” She also drew attention to one proposed cut, to do away with what she described as an “important initial notification step and opportunity for communities to weigh in” on the potential environmental impacts of deep-sea mining.
“These changes are really only going to sow more opposition and deepen the lack of trust that communities already have to deep-sea mining activities,” she said. “Typically, those conditions lead to a more challenging, less streamlined environment for projects.”
The changes are “definitely not modernisation” and there are no indications that the government is undertaking a process to modernize and strengthen the regulations, Klein said.
Other proposed changes included shortening the review timeline for lease requests from 45 days to 28 days and deleting a provision that commands BOEM to “evaluate the potential of proposed prospecting or scientific research activities for adverse impact on the environment to determine the need for mitigation measures.” In its proposal, BOEM called this provision “superfluous” since BOEM has the “statutory obligation and responsibility to evaluate all applications on a technical and environmental basis regardless of this provision.”
Bobbi-Jo Dobush, an environmental lawyer and independent ocean conservation consultant based in California, said she disagreed with BOEM’s view that its proposed changes are simply administrative. Rather, she said she viewed them as a “substantive policy change.”
“They’re cutting out all of these underlying protections and checks and balances,” Dobush told Mongabay.
The BOEM spokesperson said the proposed revisions to the OCSLA regulations aim to “advance exploration and development of critical minerals essential to national security, economic competitiveness and technological progress,” as aligned with executive orders that call to “unleash” America’s offshore critical minerals and resources and energy production. However, the agency did not respond to Mongabay’s questions about the alleged potential shortfalls in regulating the nascent industry.
‘A lease is extremely durable’
If the lease sales do proceed as planned, Dobush said it would be difficult for the government to rescind a lease once a company has one in hand, should future administrations decide to constrain deep-sea mining.
“A lease is extremely durable, extremely hard for the government to get back,” Dobush said. Moreover, she said taxpayers would be footing the bill for any cancelled leases. Currently, the Trump administration is working to cancel offshore wind leases, with the U.S government reimbursing companies nearly US$900 million.
BOEM did not reply to Mongabay’s questions about the challenges of withdrawing a lease.
Robin Craig, a professor of law at the University of Kansas and an expert on ocean and coastal law, identified another emerging risk: that the alignment of deep-sea mining with the strategic pursuit of critical minerals could enable exemptions from U.S environmental laws.
A special cabinet known as the Endangered Species Committee, nicknamed the “God Squad,” recently granted an exemption from the Endangered Species Act for oil and gas development in the Gulf of Mexico for national security purposes. This removes protections for the critically endangered Rice’s whale (Balaenoptera ricei), a species with fewer than 50 individuals that is endemic to the gulf, heightening its risk of extinction. Craig said she believes the government could grant the deep-sea mining industry similar exemptions in the future.
BOEM did not reply to Mongabay’s questions about these potential exemptions for the deep-sea mining industry.
“The minute you say, ‘critical minerals’ you’re potentially invoking national security,” Craig said. “And by classifying these deep seabed mining operations as the search for critical minerals, BOEM is positioning these activities to potentially get one of those God Squad determinations as well.
“That’s what I’m worried about,” she said.
Elizabeth Claire Alberts is a senior staff writer for Mongabay and was a 2024-2025 fellow with the Pulitzer Centre’s Ocean Reporting Network
