The Importance of Remotely Operated Vehicles in Offshore Mining...

The Importance of Remotely Operated Vehicles in Offshore Mining
5/5/2017

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Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) necessary to explore the most valuable underwater claims are a relatively new innovation.

The single largest factor which has held back underwater mining has been the cost of operating an offshore mine. Commissioning a dredge ship, crew, fuel and rolling the dice on mining untested ocean floor is too risky to invest in. But the economics of offshore mining are changing. Rare earth minerals are being consumed at a rapid rate to manufacture devices such as cell phones and solar panels. British scientists recently discovered Tellurium deposits off the coast of the Canary Islands which have concentrations 50,000 times higher than land deposits, according to the BBC. Tellurium is used in the construction of solar panels and semiconductors, and discoveries like this are critical to meet the growing demands in these sectors.
inspection class ROVs become an important way to monitor the condition of mining equipment from the safety of the surface.

Offshore mining is still in its infancy, and it’s a highly controversial subject. The ocean belongs to us all, and marine environments can be complex and delicate. We are now presented with a social dilemma: continue to mine on land and strip large areas down to bedrock, or carefully pinpoint the most concentrated marine deposits and do everything possible to minimize environmental impact. Before any mining can occur, environmentally-conscious contracts are signed between miners and the nations or states which own off-shore resource rights.

Offshore mining is the last frontier on Earth for the discovery of rare earth minerals, many of which will be necessary for our transition on to more renewable forms of energy. The more we know about the ocean floor the better prepared we will be to make decisions around the responsible harvest of these raw materials. ROVs are providing the data necessary to open our world to the possibilities of offshore mining.