American Samoa seabed auction fails to establish viable mine

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On Nov. 19, the U.S. Marine Minerals Administration plans to auction mineral rights covering about 31.5 million acres of seafloor near American Samoa. The two areas have minimum offers of $3 million each, with lease terms of 20 years. It’s an impressive area and a modest opening price for a potential new metals industry. The difference between the two numbers helps explain what the sale is actually offering.

The winning bidder will acquire a position from which to study the mineral deposits and apply for subsequent permits. The government has explicitly said that an issued lease does not authorize commercial harvesting. It allows for preliminary work such as mapping, while physical exploration, testing and mining require additional plans and approvals. The lease does not establish reserves, a collector that can operate for years, a processing plant or buyers willing to pay enough for the metals.

The announcement is being treated as a US milestone on critical minerals. Investors should pay close attention to the difference between a government auction and an operating mining project. A mineral lease may have speculative value long before a profitable business exists.

In my new TFIE strategic report on the American Samoa auction, I examine how federal leasing can move forward while the integrated business case remains weak.

The cultivated area has no direct relationship with the amount of commercially recoverable metal. The final federal notice describes northern and southern areas of approximately 16.3 million and 15.2 million acres. They are regulatory limits. A mining company needs data on deposit grade and abundance, continuity, recoverable tonnage, processing recoveries and a market price that leaves a margin after all offshore and downstream costs.

Geology is becoming better understood. In April 2026, USGS scientists deployed 38 box cores in the Samoa Basin, of which 36 produced enough material to measure nodule density. The expedition report is useful new evidence about the region. It is a summary of the expedition rather than a reservation statement for any of the rental areas. Mineral distributions vary within the sampled region, and the better-studied Clarion-Clipperton zone is not an adequate substitute for American Samoa’s own geological evidence.

Charging creates another set of costs. Impossible Metals proposes autonomous vehicles that select nodules and return to a support vessel. The Metals Company uses a more mature track and elevator approach that has demonstrated payback at pilot scale. Both must turn offshore demonstrations into reliable annual production, with maintenance, shipping time, recovery systems and delays included. Their technologies should not be assigned the same engineering maturity, but none of them have proven to be a profitable integrated mining and processing business.

In 2025, metallurgical engineer Lyle Trytten and I completed an independent techno-economic assessment commissioned by the National Ocean Protection Coalition. We examine both collection approaches, offshore operations, processing, metals markets and financial sensitivities. We consider commercial viability in the next 15 years very unlikely. A new leasing process has not provided the operational and financial evidence that was missing in that evaluation.

The history of offshore production, one of its kind, should influence financing. Nautilus Minerals spent substantial capital on its Solwara-1 venture without reaching commercial production. Deep sea mining depends on specialized machines, ships, handling systems, processing capacity and sales contracts working in sequence. The first few years of production on comparable projects rarely go smoothly. Leasing is one of the cheapest and earliest commitments in that chain.

American Samoa also has to make its own decision. His government has supported scientific research, but does not currently support commercial extraction. A lawsuit filed by Samoan chiefs and community groups challenges the federal process. The resulting legal and territorial issues matter along with engineering and economics. The environmental finding for preliminary leasing activities is not a finding about the effects of a future commercial mine.

Auction results will show how much qualified bidders will pay for an opportunity. A winning bid can justify further study of a company and improve its fundraising history. A running business will require years of capital investment, evidence of production, and profitable metal sales. These are much more difficult milestones and remain ahead of the bidders.

Read A Seabed Lease Does Not Fix a Failed Business Case for a full assessment of the auction and the Barnard-Trytten report for the underlying financial and engineering analysis.