Sea-Floor Massive Sulfide Mining - Its Possibility and Difficulties to Emerge as a Future Business

摘要

There are several types of mineral resources under or on the deep-sea bed. Manganese Nodules, Cobalt-rich Manganese Crusts, and Sea-floor Massive Sulfides (SMS) are well known future metal resources in the deep-sea. Although, there have been a lot of activities to study those resources as scientific interests as well as a business point of view, any deep-sea mineral resources has not been developed yet.Some nations and private companies are aggressive on these deep-sea mineral resources by seeing the recent higher metal prices. However, ordinary mining companies are still suspicious whether the deep-sea mining is satisfactory profitable or not, compared to the ordinary on-shore mineral resources mining. It is obvious that there must be a lot of challenges on exploration, mining and metal recovering technologies, and environmental protection measures for the commercial development.In this paper, present situations of the seafloor massive sulfide (SMS) mining are explained and discussed mainly based on the data and information published by Japanese related organizations including the Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation (JOGMEC).