There is at present an explosion of interest in sea floor massive sulfide exploration. The initiative for exploration is moving rapidly from being centred around government funding (eg. National Science Foundation) using public monies to privately funded work with the money coming from share sales on the public bourses, private investors, and from large land based mining companies. Nautilus Minerals and Neptune are two examples of the new ocean mineral exploration companies. Nautilus is a small startup mineral exploration company that has raised USD300 million in a year. Anglo American, Barrick Gold, Teck Cominco Ltd, and Newmont Mining Corporation are examples of large, well established, land based mining companies who have recently made significant investments in ocean mineral exploration. At this time large areas of sea floor are being staked in the national waters of countries such as Papua New Guinea and New Zealand. These are countries with well established mining legislation. It is worthwhile looking at the reasons mining companies have become interested in sea floor deposits. Submarine massive sulfide (SMS) deposits are recognized as a deposit type that is a precursor to some of the richest ore deposits found on land. Storied mines such as Kid Creek, Brunswick #1, the Sullivan mine, and the Mt Isa mine were probably created as SMS deposits, and then buried and uplifted into their present land based situation over geologic time. The grades found in SMS deposits today are higher than those generally being mined on land. The present geological opinion is that this is a new style of deposit, that there has been very little exploration done to date for them, and that the first explorers will find the biggest deposits. The question "how will we mine these deposits?" no longer frightens engineers. The oil industry has led the charge into deep waters. Although not simple, the problem of building an ocean mining system is now mainly an engineering problem, with predictable costs and construction time lines. The ability of an ocean mining system to move from one deposit to another has a huge impact on the profitability of an ocean bottom mine. A new mine is the sum of its parts - a number of smaller deposits can be mined as one mine. It is not necessary to build a new mine infrastructure for each deposit. Also, the mining schedule can be organized to mine the highest valued ore first, and then to return to lower grades later in the mining cycle and after the capital cost of the infrastructure has been paid off. On land, one has to start at the top and work down, and one cannot move to another ore body without building new infrastructure. There is far less flexibility in a land based mine's mining schedule.
展开▼
