Japan looks to the ocean in its quest for minerals
With more than 50m tonnes of ore estimated in Japanese waters, Tokyo wants to ease dependence on imports
Tokyo
AS deep as 1,600 metres under water and 1,500 kilometres from Tokyo, work has begun on the new hunting ground for metals in Japan, a country so devoid of natural resources that most of what it needs is imported.
As the island nation depleted most of its land-based minerals in the economic boom that followed World War II, scientists have identified swathes of the sea floor littered with nuggets containing everything from copper to gold left over from the volcanic activity that created the archipelago millions of years ago. The trick is extracting them at a profit, something a government consortium will start testing next year.
Ocean mining isn't new - Japan began exploring in the 1970s. But new technologies make it easier for companies such as Canada's Nautilus Minerals Inc to collect mineral-rich rock from the sea.
With more than 50 million tonnes of ore estimated in Japanese waters, the government wants to revive homegrown supply and ease dependence on imports.
When Tokyo hosts the 2020 Olympic Games, bullion for gold medals may come from the deep ocean.
"Disruption of metal supplies may occur in the near future," said Tetsuro Urabe, a geologist who is director of the government's Next-Generation Technology for Ocean Resources Exploration Programme. "We don't want to be in a panic when we are confronted with a copper crisis. Unless we develop various kinds of new technology in advance, we won't be ready for launch when needed."
It's not surprising that mineral resources sit untouched in deep waters around Japan. The country is nestled in the Pacific Basin along a line of volcanoes and fault lines known as the Ring of Fire, a region prone to earthquakes and eruptions. When that volcanic activity occurs in the sea, magma pushes up from the Earth's crust. After it cools, the deposits contain minerals in far greater concentrations than those dug from the land.
In the blackness of the deep ocean, engineers have used remote-controlled robots and special sensors to search the sea floor for the most promising deposits.
As the world's third-biggest economy and a major importer of everything from iron ore to oil, Japan wants to exploit its rights to access sea-based mineral ores that one domestic industry group estimates may be worth 80 trillion yen (S$1.05 trillion). Under international maritime law, Japan holds sway over the area 200 nautical miles from its shores, constituting the world's sixth-largest exclusive economic zone.
Others also are trying to mine seabed ore in waters near China, South Korea and North America. So far, there isn't any commercial production although Toronto-based Nautilus has a project under way off Papua New Guinea, where the company plans to start mining gold and copper in the first quarter of 2018.
A Japanese consortium, led by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd and Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp's engineering unit, will conduct a pilot mining and lifting of ore at the Izena sea hole off the southern island of Okinawa in the next financial year starting in April. Japan has confirmed the deposit has about 7.4 million tonnes of ore, twice what was detected three years ago.
"New deposits have begun to be found one after another," said Mitsuya Hirokawa, deputy director general at the metals mining technology department of Japan Oil, Gas & Metals National Corp (Jogmec), the state-run company that helps secure energy and mineral supplies and is providing support for the sea-bed venture. The area off Okinawa shows some of the "greatest potential", Mr Hirokawa said.
Extracting the ore is getting cheaper. Nautilus Minerals, in a 2010 study, estimated it would cost about US$480 million to build a seafloor production system at its Solwara 1 project in 1,600 metres of water off Papua New Guinea. That compares with about US$1.5 billion to US$2 billion for a similar project on land, the company said.
Even with higher costs associated with working on the water and transporting ore to shore for smelting, the expense is worth it because of the higher concentration of useable metal than what is found on land, said Yoshio Akiyama, chief research officer for the metals mining technology department at Jogmec. Using the Nautilus report, he estimates cash costs at about 34 US cents a pound for copper, compared with US$1.60 for a land-based mine. BLOOMBERG
