A Pioneer Deep Ocean Mining Venture

The M.I.T. - NOAA Deep Ocean Mining Model is a flexible tool meant primarily as a basis for comparing the economic outcomes of a deep ocean mining venture under differing sets of assumptions as to costs, timing, regulatory policies, etc. The user can very easily choose the assumptions desired for a particular analytic purpose and introduce them in the computer program. This flexibility is appropriate to the high degree of uncertainty attending the future industry. Although more becomes known, or at least increasingly certain, each year about the technology, its costs and capabilities, the regulatory structure and, perhaps, the international legal environment, uncertainty over an industry which is still in its developmental stage remains high. In the midst of such uncertainty, modelers must identify the assumptions upon which they base their work. In this study, three kinds of assumptions are made explicit and introduced into the model. Presented in the following paragraphs is a brief narrative summarizing a set of likely operating events of a hypothetical pioneer deep ocean manganese nodule mining project. Grant no. NA 79-AA-D0010