Blue Sea Potential or Red Ink Well  

Authors / CoAuthors

Kay, P.

Abstract

Australian Mining History Association (Charters Towers July 2014): Offshore resource potential is clear with strong prospects identified, international certainty of tenure exists through the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the regulatory/legal system is well established, yet future offshore mineral prospects remains elusive. Deep sea mining's blue sky potential has been spruiked for so long it genuinely qualifies as mining history, but remains limited to future prospects. Historical targets have included diamonds, polymetallic nodules, cobalt on seamounts, base and precious metal rich hydrothermal vents, construction materials, coal and deep leads of tin or gold extending from onshore areas. Australia's seabed jurisdiction under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) is over 16 million square kilometres, twice the area of Australian land. The Commonwealth Offshore Minerals Act 1994 relates to the exploration and production of these commodities, but in contrast to the offshore petroleum sector little activity has been recorded. Offshore resource potential is clear with strong prospects identified, international certainty of tenure exists through UNCLOS and the regulatory/legal system is well established, yet future offshore mineral prospects remains elusive. This is despite Australia based companies engaging in exploration and proposing developments in the South Pacific. Having identified the problem of lack of commercial interest, could government take actions to rectify the situation and encourage positive economic outcomes stemming from sustainable and environmentally responsible resource development in Australia's world scale offshore regime

Product Type

nonGeographicDataset

eCat Id

79561

Contact for the resource

Keywords

• PowerPoint

( Theme )

• minerals

( Theme )

• continental shelf

( Theme )

• commodities

( Theme )

• marine jurisdiction

( Theme )

• resource assessment

( Theme )

• marine

Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC)

• Economics

• Published_Internal

Publication Date

2014-01-01T00:00:00

Creation Date

Security Constraints

Australian Government Security ClassificationSystem    

Classification - unclassified

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence    

Access - restricted

Use - license

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Purpose

Maintenance Information

asNeeded

Topic Category

economy

Series Information

Economic Geology

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Unknown

Parent Information

Extents

Reference System

AGD84 (EPSG:4203)

Spatial Resolution

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Associations

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