A California company is asking the Trump administration for permission to explore the deep seas off the coast of American Samoa for critical minerals, a proposal that conservation groups are casting as dangerous and premature.
Impossible Metals has submitted a request with the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to begin a leasing process under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act of 1953. American Samoa is an unincorporated U.S. territory in the Polynesia region of the South Pacific.
The company said it’s angling to explore U.S. waters in what’s called an “exclusive economic zone,” or EEZ, a maritime area where a nation has specific rights regarding exploration and use of natural resources, including energy production.
The company believes that part of the ocean is rich in minerals like nickel, cobalt, copper, magnesium, and rare earths — materials that China currently dominates and countries like the U.S. are trying to source domestically.
