Why It Matters

The U.S. is 100 percent net import reliant for six critical minerals found beneath American ocean waters: gallium, manganese, niobium, scandium, titanium, and yttrium. A recent Congressional Research Service (CRS) report updated July 2 examines the Trump administration's accelerating push to lease federal seabed rights for mineral extraction on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), a strategy aimed at reducing dependence on foreign sources, particularly Chinese suppliers. The stakes cut both ways: policymakers see domestic seabed mining as essential to national security and economic competitiveness, while environmental groups and some coastal stakeholders worry about the pace of environmental review and unknown ocean impacts.

The Big Picture

The Trump administration has issued three executive orders (E.O. 14154, E.O. 14156, and E.O. 14285) related to seabed mineral leasing. In April, Executive Order 14285 made it U.S. policy to rapidly develop domestic capabilities for exploration, characterization, collection, and processing of seabed mineral resources. The Interior Department followed with concrete steps: in June 2025, it announced streamlining measures including expedited emergency permitting, lower minimum bids at lease auctions, and skipped discretionary consultation steps, potentially saving anywhere from two months to more than a year in permitting timelines. In February 2026, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) proposed a rule to eliminate environmental analysis requirements for prospecting permits and to skip notification of states and local governments.

BOEM administers offshore mineral leasing under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA). Experts estimate that 43 of the U.S. Geological Survey's 2025 list of 60 critical minerals occur on the OCS. Despite this abundance, BOEM has never issued a single critical mineral lease as of the report's publication. In 2025, two U.S. deep-sea mining companies submitted requests to BOEM for areas offshore of American Samoa and Virginia, and BOEM stated that it anticipates holding lease sales offshore of American Samoa in August 2026, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) in November 2026, Alaska in December 2026, and Virginia in 2027. The Alaska lease sale covers over 113 million acres.

Several obstacles complicate the strategy. The U.S. currently lacks domestic facilities to process seabed minerals. RAND analysts noted in September 2025 that the lack of U.S. mineral processing capacity is the missing piece in seabed mining strategy. Coastal opposition is mounting. On June 4, Guam's governor signed a law banning deep-sea mining and barring mining vessels from the island's port. The governors of both the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam submitted a joint request for extended comment periods on proposed seabed mining.

Environmental concerns remain largely unresolved. Scientists have not fully characterized the impacts of commercial-scale seabed mining. Potential harms include deep-sea habitat disturbance, sediment plumes, harm to marine mammals, and disruption of deep-sea carbon storage. BOEM acknowledges that baseline environmental data for seabed mining is sparse. Stakeholders and environmental groups have raised concerns about the pace of environmental review.

The Bottom Line

The Trump administration is moving aggressively to extract minerals from U.S. waters before environmental science catches up. Japan confirmed in February 2026 the successful retrieval of rare earth element-rich mud from 4 miles below the ocean surface. Congress faces a choice: whether to allow the accelerated permitting timeline to proceed, demand more environmental baseline work before leasing begins, or confront the processing capacity gap that could render offshore extraction moot without domestic refining infrastructure.

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