Cooks to take more direct approach to seabed mining

Transcript

The Cook Islands government says it will consider a more direct approach to securing investors to mine its sea floor after a five month open tender process failed to register a single bid.

The country's finance minister says he is not surprised by the lack of interest in the open tender process given the depressed state of global minerals markets and the high risk, high cost nature of deep sea mining.

Mark Brown spoke with Koroi Hawkins

MARK BROWN: I am not surprised at all that there were no formal applications through the tender process. The current economic climate I guess is not conducive to investment in this particular area right now with the press prices for commodities minerals even oil. So the appetite for investment in this area sort of dampened however we are still progressing with other initiatives in our sea bed minerals area. Reviewing our current legislation, also looking at capacity building with other agencies to improve the skills and knowledge base of our people that will be in the industry. And also continuing on with our discussions with other private companies who are interested in our sea bed minerals sector.

KOROI HAWKINS: Which companies or which countries are you having direct conversations with and how far are those conversations coming along?

MB: Well we have companies from Europe, America and also from Canada and there are different stages of I guess engagement with these companies. Ah one of them we are engaged in discussions in a partnership arrangement also in the international seabed authority area in the Northern Pacific in the Clarion Clipperton Zone and the others we are in discussions with at looking at options for exploration in our own EEZ. And we are hopeful that when the time is right that we will be able to enter into exploration. But again this is a really new sector, a new area and although we have put in place some very good legislation in regards to access into our EEZ and also legislation regarding the taxation and royalties regime that we will apply as we get to the exploitation stage it is still very much a new industry and we are still trying to obtain as much as we can moving forward. So this is, I guess for us, this is a long term process that we are engaging in and we are right at the beginning of that process right now.

KH: In terms of where the industry is going, some of the more progressed forms or ones that are closer to seabed mining are in Papua New Guinea and other areas. Do you think that, that good legislation that you talked about might be an issue as to why you haven't received any tenders?

MB: No I think it is the nature of the mining itself. In Papua New Guinea they are involved in mining the seabed crusts which are at a relatively shallow depth compared to the Manganese nodules or the poly-metallic nodules in our waters which are at five to six thousand metres depth. It is more a case of the technology required for the different types of mineral mining in these areas.

KH: And just looking forward to the future will there be another tender process opening or what is the next step for the Cook Islands in that regard?

MB: Well we are undergoing a review now of our tender process and see if there is areas we need to change or improve but the reality is that probably, there exist around half a dozen companies internationally who are in a position to undertake this type of exploration in the world. So it is a very small field of very highly skilled expertise that is required to undertake this, so we are in discussions with a couple of those companies now. I believe that we will probably get more movement on a bilateral negotiated process rather than through an open tender process.