Seabed Nickel at 4.5 Billion Tonnes: Executive Order 14285

In April 2025, U.S. President Trump signed Executive Order 14285,

calling for the development of seabed mineral deposits to help secure

supplies of critical minerals such as nickel. A 2022 USGS study

estimated that global seabed deposits contain approximately 4.5 billion

tonnes of nickel — more than ten times the terrestrial reserves. Whether

seabed mining scales commercially will reshape the nickel market for the

2030s.¹

The Executive Order

Executive Order 14285, issued in April 2025, directed U.S. federal

agencies to accelerate development of seabed mineral resources. The

Order framed seabed mining as a strategic priority for the United States

in its response to global critical-minerals concentration, and

specifically identified nickel, cobalt, copper and manganese — all

abundant in seabed polymetallic nodules — as key targets.¹

Following the Order, several U.S. and international companies submitted

applications to explore regions prospective for nickel-bearing

ferromanganese crusts and polymetallic nodules. The most active regions

for commercial interest are the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the Pacific

Ocean between Hawaii and Mexico, the Rio Grande Rise off the Brazilian

coast, and several other specific deep-water regions with exceptionally

high nodule density.

The Executive Order was the strongest U.S. policy signal on seabed

mining in decades. Previous administrations had generally treated seabed

mining as a research-and-regulatory question rather than a commercial

priority, and the shift in emphasis during 2025 reflected the broader

critical-minerals anxiety that Chinese export controls and Indonesian

dominance had intensified.

The 4.5 Billion Tonne Resource

The USGS's 2022 assessment of global seabed mineral resources estimated

that polymetallic nodules and ferromanganese crusts together contain

approximately 4.5 billion tonnes of nickel.¹ For context, terrestrial

reserves of nickel across all producing nations total approximately 140

million tonnes — meaning the seabed resource is more than 30 times the

terrestrial reserve base.

The resource is not uniformly distributed. Polymetallic nodules in the

Clarion-Clipperton Zone are the most extensively studied and contain

nickel, cobalt, copper and manganese in commercially interesting

concentrations. Ferromanganese crusts, found on seamounts in the Pacific

and other ocean basins, contain somewhat different mineralogy with

higher cobalt but generally lower copper.

The nickel grades in seabed nodules are typically 1.0-1.5 percent,

comparable to or better than many terrestrial laterite operations. The

key economic question is not resource size or grade — both are

favourable — but whether the technology to collect, transport and

process seabed material can operate at commercial scale with acceptable

cost and environmental performance.

What Seabed Mining Looks Like

Commercial seabed mining involves three principal steps. Collection

vehicles operating on the seafloor at depths of 4,000-6,000 metres

gather polymetallic nodules from the seabed surface. Riser systems

transport the collected material up the water column to a surface

vessel. The collected material is then processed either on a nearby

vessel or transported to shore-based processing facilities for metal

extraction.

The technology for each of these steps has been under development for

decades. The collection-vehicle technology is the most

engineering-demanding: operating a tracked vehicle at deep-water

pressures, in darkness, collecting material while minimising sediment

disturbance, is not a trivial industrial problem. Several companies have

built and tested prototype vehicles during the 2020s, but no

commercial-scale deployment has yet occurred.

Environmental concerns are substantial. Deep-sea ecosystems are poorly

understood, recovery times from physical disturbance are measured in

decades or longer, and sediment plumes from collection vehicles could

affect broad ocean regions beyond the active mining footprint.

Marine-science research organisations and environmental groups have been

consistent in arguing for caution on commercialisation pending better

ecosystem understanding.

Timeline and Obstacles

The International Seabed Authority (ISA) is the UN body responsible for

regulating mining in international waters, and its regulatory framework

for commercial exploitation is still being finalised. ISA member states

have been negotiating a mining code for years without consensus, and the

lack of clear rules is a significant obstacle to any commercial-scale

deployment outside national waters.

Executive Order 14285 specifically addressed U.S. national waters and

the use of U.S. regulatory authorities to authorise U.S.-flagged

commercial operations, potentially before the ISA finalises its

framework. That approach is legally innovative but politically

contested, and it could catalyse similar national-level authorisations

by other jurisdictions.

Even with regulatory clarity, commercial-scale seabed mining is unlikely

before the late 2020s at the earliest. The combination of technology

readiness, environmental-assessment requirements, capital commitments

and market acceptance from downstream customers means the seabed will

not be a meaningful nickel-supply contributor before 2028-2030.

What It Means for Terrestrial Producers

For Brazilian terrestrial nickel producers, seabed mining represents a

long-dated competitive threat. If seabed operations scale to commercial

significance during the 2030s — adding hundreds of thousands of tonnes

per year of nickel supply — the global price deck could shift

structurally lower, pressuring Brazilian and other terrestrial

producers.

The offset is that seabed mining is unlikely to reach that scale before

the end of the decade. Brazilian producers who establish market

positions, offtake contracts and industrial relationships during the