The Trump administration says it is nearing approval for the first permits to mine the deep sea. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told a gathering of G20 energy ministers in Houston on Monday that permits could arrive within months, part of what he calls a strategy of "energy addition" to widen the country's supply of critical minerals.
Those minerals sit inside potato-shaped rocks called polymetallic nodules, scattered across parts of the Pacific seafloor. The nodules hold nickel, cobalt, copper, and manganese, the building blocks for electric vehicles, defense systems, and electronics. Burgum said the timing discussions are already underway and signaled more news is coming soon.
#A Front-Runner Already Waiting
TMC USA, the American subsidiary of Nasdaq-listed The Metals Company, is furthest along in the queue. Its application covers roughly 65,000 square kilometers of seabed in the Pacific's Clarion Clipperton Zone, with an estimated 619 million tonnes of nodules. The company filed under Executive Order 14285, which Trump signed in 2025 to direct faster permitting through the little-used Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which sits under Burgum's Interior Department through the Marine Minerals Administration, has targeted October 2026 to certify TMC's application, though that date is not guaranteed. At least nine companies are now in talks with the government for access to seabed minerals, an Associated Press review found earlier this year.
#A Legal Fight Beyond US Waters
The bigger risk sits outside Washington. TMC's subsidiaries hold exploration contracts with the International Seabed Authority, the UN body that governs mining in international waters. By seeking a US permit instead of waiting for the ISA's unfinished mining code, TMC sidestepped that process entirely, and the ISA opened an inquiry into whether the move breached its contracts.
TMC took that fight to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, which ruled in July that the ISA's inquiry can continue but must respect the company's due process rights. The dispute leaves open a harder question, whether minerals pulled up under a US permit would carry any international legal standing at all.
Environmental groups, meanwhile, warn that vacuuming nodules off the seafloor could cause biodiversity loss that cannot be undone, and they have pushed for a moratorium on the entire industry.
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#What The Stock Price Is Really Saying
None of this has translated into a steady stock story. Shares of The Metals Company soared more than 450% in 2025 on the political tailwind, then spent much of 2026 sliding back toward 52-week lows, well off the highs. That gap between political momentum and share price says something. Investors have learned that an executive order and a permit are not the same thing, and that a permit issued in Washington does not settle a legal fight playing out at international tribunals.
The real test now is whether NOAA meets its own timeline and an actual permit gets issued, not just discussed. Watch the October certification date, and watch whether US allies and trading partners treat any resulting minerals as legitimate under international law.