00:00:00.080and let's face it all mining is disrupting something but if you have a choice of a very
00:00:07.440low biodiverse area with no large ocean megafauna versus incredible biodiversity of the
00:00:18.400indonesian rainforest and we need the metals what you'd rather have
00:00:23.920today on true patriot love media i'm lucky enough to have stan sudall the republic of mining right
00:00:34.380welcome stan how do you do good man hey um so you know it's interesting because we picked up this
00:00:40.780show um based on the number of clicks so you know people's views so we were kind of looking around
00:00:47.800for a mining show and we said what are people interested in learning about and i was shocked
00:00:52.960that it was about a topic which is on canada's pacific coast by a primarily based vancouver
00:01:02.140company and so i was like oh this is very interesting and you know it dealt with oceans
00:01:07.220mining um and the formations uh that are in the sea of copper nickel and cobalt many more items
00:01:15.760i'm sure um and a company that's actually looking at the deep water dollar signs which are big
00:01:22.640numbers uh and the potential of this new industry well i don't even know if it's new honestly stan
00:01:28.960so because apparently we just found out by before the show this has been going on into the 1970s
00:01:37.680this deep water absolutely mining and so and then it stopped it really got going and then
00:01:43.600i guess for political reasons for sensitivity reasons uh probably it was just basically um
00:01:50.080The old Inco, which was a major mining company in Sudbury, was very interested in these nodules at the bottom of the Clipperton area of the Pacific Ocean because they're nickel, copper, cobalt, and manganese rich.
00:02:08.540So basically between those three metals, roughly 35% of these nodules are metallic and you only have 65% waste.
00:02:16.400So they were investigating the nickel component primarily in the late 70s.
00:02:21.000And the old Inco actually brought up about 2,000 tons of potato-sized nodules.
00:02:29.780I'm going to stop you for a minute because I want to lay out for the guests
00:02:35.160because I got schooled in this yesterday.
00:05:48.040Then the market for nickel sort of crashed
00:05:50.200in the early 80s so it kind of fell out by the wayside it was based a mixture of
00:05:57.000legal security of being able to to pick up these materials who actually owned it and the crash in
00:06:05.080the metal prices and so it just got on the back burner and that was that so there's an entity
00:06:10.280that governs the sea i guess so you know so there's a group um talk to me about that for
00:06:15.160The International Seabed Authority, which is based in Jamaica, they basically were formed in 1994 to try to put rules and regulations on who can go in there and mine or gather these nodules.
00:06:32.720And there's a huge number of countries that are part of the International Seabed Authority, but the United States is not.
00:06:41.740And currently, the International Seabed Authority has roughly almost 60 environmental NGOs as bystanders or people who basically follow what they're doing.
00:06:58.760And what has happened is it's become so political and basically, of course, the environmental movement.
00:07:05.360anytime there's something new uh it's like a green chicken little little green chicken little
00:07:12.320the sky is falling this is going to destroy the entire uh habitat the entire uh ocean ecosystem
00:07:20.640let's put aside that one-third of oil production in the world is uh coming from the ocean and that
00:07:27.600hasn't destroyed the entire ocean ecosystem we actually do a lot of aggregate mining from the
00:07:37.600ocean in shallower areas near the shoreline right for sand and gravel and cement yes i knew that
00:07:47.520and and and those are in more biodiverse rich parts of the ocean and it hasn't destroyed it
00:07:54.240but in an area that is absolutely almost devoid of major fish fauna if you can use that term um
00:08:03.680very cold um dark because because of the depth yes because it's 6 000 meters you know there's
00:08:11.200nothing living there well very there's things there's some stuff there yeah okay but let's
00:08:16.320let's just throw in the context uh the clipperton zone is roughly uh four and a half million square
00:08:23.120miles and a square kilometer sorry and people will go oh my god that's so big but it's only
00:08:28.720one and a half percent of the territory that is under the oceans in the world right and the
00:08:34.800clipperton zone is off of the in between hawaii and mexico right and and so that's the the the
00:08:41.600expansive that's why it's so big yes right okay and and so people is so the environmentalists
00:08:47.360are going well this is this uncharted territory but actually the metals company has spent around
00:08:51.760250 million dollars over the past i don't know decade or a little bit uh uh doing environmental
00:08:58.560monitoring and testing and and they've had a lot of uh seasoned oceanographers and other scientists
00:09:05.760who are looking at this and they may not agree with some of the uh rulings but um you know there
00:09:13.040is the impact isn't the impact isn't as bad as they make it out to be now now if you take a look
00:09:22.720at and i guess the big analogy is uh look at what's happening to the uh rainforests the biodiverse
00:09:30.080uh rainforest in indonesia where they're strip mining for nickel right in cobalt uh
00:09:36.880it's it's it's it's it's almost a crime against nature because you're not going to replant the
00:09:41.280tropical rainforest they're never going to be the same versus in this area which is a tiny micro
00:09:47.040dot of the pacific ocean you're going to have some disruption and and let's face it all mining
00:09:54.720is disrupting something but if you have a choice of a very low biodiverse area with no large ocean
00:10:05.760megafauna versus incredible biodiversity of the indonesian rainforest and we need the metals
00:10:15.920what you'd rather have well let's talk about the metals from it because you hit on a that's
00:10:20.240interesting i want to make sure the viewers because this is you know it's it's environmental
00:10:24.960issues it's easy to get passionate yeah and right away you know my mind went there right away i
00:10:29.280thought okay this is the ocean floor we must cherish it you know and all this good stuff
00:10:35.360and and and then you know i started uh going through the list of items so you know you've
00:10:41.120kind of named a few of them you know nickel uh cobalt copper uh magnesium manganese manganese
00:10:50.560but is it rare earth is this where i always get kind of um critical minerals versus rare earth
00:10:57.440manoros right so this is where i kind of always i got to get my mind straight okay the the nodules
00:11:02.560in the clipperton region are are potato-sized nodules that are basically nickel copper cobalt
00:11:12.480and uh manganese okay so roughly 35 percent of one of these potato size nodules is metallic
00:11:21.12065 percent is waste and that's a key point because when you're operating a huge open pit mine in
00:11:27.760british columbia or or the congo uh or or or chile you're you're looking at sometimes copper grades
00:11:36.640in the half percent grade okay so so 0.05 is a metal and 90
00:11:45.52099.5 percent is waste oh so you have to take that waste oh yeah with with all these huge open
00:11:58.060pit mine copper mines especially in british columbia you have copper grades that are like
00:12:03.860half a percent oh and 99 and a half percent is waste so you have to store them somewhere
00:12:09.580So these copper nodules are rich, they're dense.