VANCOUVER (miningweekly.com) – An experienced exploration team is keen to get equipment back out on the water and into the deep sea floor about 5 km below the ocean surface in the offshore Cook Islands exclusive economic zone, to look for rare earth elements (REEs) and scandium.

Headed by marine mining veteran Ron Rose, who has decades of experience in the marine mining environment, Ocean Minerals has entered into a licensing agreement with fellow Houston-based firm Deep Reach Technology (DRT) to provide engineering technology and information it gained during a research study conducted on alternative sources of REEs, in areas in the Cook Islands.

The project grew out of a US Department of Defence grant to DRT to find alternative economically viable sources of REEs and scandium. Rose points out that the marine mining environment negates a great deal of geopolitical risk and the pollution generated in the marine environment is a fraction of what terrestrial projects have to deal with.

Scandium is usually produced as a by-product of other minerals such as uranium.

ACCIDENTAL DISCOVERY
Rose explained to Mining Weekly Online that DRT had followed up on Japanese research that accidentally “tripped” over the potential new sources of REEs and scandium deposits in the deep seabed, containing enriched concentrations.

The company also assayed seabed samples held by oceanographic institutes for mineral traces and found high grades of scandium, a useful metal to strengthen lightweight aluminium alloys.

He noted that initial sample grabs pointed to “encouraging economic potential”.

Rose said that scandium was the “kicker” to the REE deposit, as it comprised about half of the mineralisation found to date.

DRT, which will do most of the work, has a patent pending for its proprietary exploration technology.

Rose stated that the system would have similarities to that proposed by Nautilus Minerals, including a comparable riser system. However, mining will be much easier, as it only involves sucking up a layer of muddy sediments laying about 4 m to 8 m below a layer of overburden containing manganese-rich nodules. This could in future become economic by-product.

FUNDING CHALLENGE
“Mining is the easy part. Securing exploration funding is the hard part. It’s a challenge to secure investor cash to explore,” Rose asserted.

He added that, while the prospect generating company planned to list on the public markets in the long run, for now it needs about $10-million for an initial phase of exploration. It will also need at least $20-million more to firm up the resource to a Joint Ore Reserves Committee-compliant standard.

Pending financing, the exploration team will head out next year and take grabs using existing technologies employed by the oil and gas industry to reach targets 5 km below surface.

While they are out there, they will also start collecting baseline information on ocean currents on the abyssal plain, Rose advised.

He noted that separation of the REEs and scandium would use existing technologies, while also embracing new technological advances.

LEGISLATIVE FRAMEWORK
Rose noted that the Cook Islands already had a favourable regulatory regime in place governing marine mining initiatives, having enacted the Seabed Act in 2009.

Government has created the Seabed Minerals Authority to develop and mature the seabed minerals sector of the Cook Islands. The New Zealand-linked government had also formed the Cook Islands Investment Corporation, in 1998, to manage Crown subsidiaries and assets, including land and properties on Rarotonga and the outer islands.