An Economic Analysis of a Pioneer Deep Ocean Mining Venture

摘要

A 3 million ton per year, three metal, vertically integrated, ocean exploration, mining, transportation and ore-processing and metal-marketing system is defined and the capital and operating costs estimated in 1980 U.S. dollars. A basic return-on-investment pay-out analysis model is presented with several alternate cases investigated. A series of tests is performed to determine the system's sensitivity to realistic variations of key costs and schedule.