Minerals Report - International Seabed Authority

international community is only just beginning to discover these mineral
deposits. Mr. Lenoble pointed out that he could not describe any of the
mineral resources as “ore deposits” because the latter terminology implied
knowledge that one could recover the material at a profit. For this to be the
case, Mr. Lenoble said, a feasibility study would have had to be successfully
undertaken. Mr. Lenoble differentiated between deposits in the Area and in
the Exclusive Economic Zones of states. In this regard, in response to a
question about the massive sulphides deposits at Conical Seamount in Papua
New Guinea, Mr. Lenoble said that with an independent gold mining and
mineral processing operation in Lihir, should a rigorous evaluation of these
deposits take place, it was possible that such a venture could proceed taking
advantage of this relatively close infrastructure.
Mr. Lenoble also pointed out that normally; with land-based deposits,
the costs for detailed exploration amounted to 6 per cent of the capital
expenditure for starting a deposit. He recalled how during the sixties and
seventies, consortia had spent hundreds of millions of dollars on exploration
without being able to prove the commercial feasibility of mining polymetallic
nodule deposits. In the case of France, he said that it was estimated that the
Government had already spent 25 per cent of the projected capital
expenditure on its deposits in its pioneer area in the central Pacific Ocean.
Mr. Lenoble described this as an important factor if one were planning on
obtaining finance from private or public sources.
A number of participants made comments about the data on metal
prices presented by Mr. Lenoble. It was noted that metal prices had steadily
declined in real terms during this period. It was therefore pointed out that the
situation with polymetallic nodules could not simply be resolved by waiting
on higher metal prices. It was suggested that the way forward with this
resource is either to find richer deposits or to improve mining and processing
technology to yield lower production costs. For polymetallic nodules, Mr.
Lenoble made the point that until the International Seabed Authority adopts a
mining code, exploration contractors with the Authority will delay detailed
exploration in order to undertake feasibility studies. Another participant
noted that in the case of massive sulphides mining, many of its promoters
were of the opinion that declining metal prices would work in the interest of
the developing these deposits. This participant was of the view that access to
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