Seabed Regulators to Question Mining Firms Seeking US Licenses

A United Nations-affiliated organization with jurisdiction over the global seabed took a tentative step Monday to respond to US President Donald Trump’s fast-tracking of deep-sea mining for critical minerals in international waters.

The International Seabed Authority’s policymaking body requested the organization’s secretary-general to obtain information from ISA-licensed seabed mining companies at risk of violating their contracts under a UN treaty that prohibits unilateral mining. That was an oblique reference to seabed miner The Metals Company (TMC), which has applied for US authorization to extract electric-vehicle battery metals in an area of the Pacific Ocean it licenses from the ISA.

Canadian-registered TMC’s US ...