Seafloor Polymetallic Nodules – A clean solution to the Battery Metal Supply Gap

Anthony O’Sullivan has over 30 years mining experience with a track-record of delivering innovative solutions across multiple continents both in the terrestrial and marine environments. Anthony is currently the Chief Development Officer of DeepGreen Metals Inc, a company looking to produce clean battery metals from the oceans. Previously, Anthony was Chief Operating Officer of Nautilus, leading exploration, engineering and design, project development, permitting and product marketing, culminating in the declaration of 43- 101 compliant resources, grant of the environmental permit and mining lease from the Government of Papua New Guinea, ore sales agreement with one of China’s leading copper producers Tongling Nonferrous Metals Group and the completion of project design and commencement of project construction.  He was also previously part of the BHP Billion Global Exploration Leadership Team with responsibility for the company’s iron ore, bauxite, coal and non-porphyry base metal exploration portfolios.  He is the named co-inventor on 5 subsea mining patents.

Every year, we extract 9 billion tonnes of metal ores and in the process, we create a 350billion tonne waste problem, destroy tropical habitats and carbon sinks, releasing toxic substances into the environment and emissions into the atmosphere. While metals do not have renewable substitutes, they can be recovered and recycled – that’s the good news. The bad news is, we currently do not have enough metal in the system to close the loop and we will need to inject a lot of virgin metal to provide for an additional 3 billion people this century. We may be transitioning away from the Age of Fossil Fuels, but we are entering the Age of Metals, and it is imperative that we find ways to produce the new stock of metals with much less environmental damage... and repair the damage that we do cause. Based on life cycle analyses and project development to date, we believe that producing metals from the polymetallic nodules in the deep ocean could be a much better way to supply metals for the green transition.