The Metals Company’s seabed exploration license application passes regulatory milestone   

Undersea critical minerals explorer The Metals Company (Nasdaq: TMC) announced Thursday that the USA B exploration license application submitted by its U.S. subsidiary, TMC USA, had been formally certified by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). 

 The USA B application area covers ~122,000 km2 of seafloor and hosts an estimated 1.02 billion tonnes of polymetallic nodules based upon TMC’s technical report summary for the Initial Assessment published in August 2025.  

TMC USA is also advancing a consolidated application for an exploration license and commercial recovery permit for the USA A area, which was submitted to NOAA in January, and later determined to be fully compliant on April 28, the company said. 

Also last month, the company submitted data from almost a decade of deep-sea exploration to DeepData, an open database of contractor data managed by the International Seabed Authority (ISA). 

The data covers exploration by TMC’s subsidiaries between 2013-2022, comprising a collection of biological and geochemical samples from across the eastern Clarion Clipperton Zone (CCZ) of the Pacific Ocean between Mexico and Hawaii. 

“Today’s certification of our USA B exploration license application marks another important milestone in NOAA’s transparent, rules-based process and we look forward to the development and publication of an EIS. Exploration is a critical step to unlocking the transformative potential of the untapped nodule resource for the United States,” TMC CEO Gerard Barron said in a news release. 

Regulatory milestones 

NOAA is expected to soon publish a Notice of Intent to Prepare an Environmental Impact Statement, followed by the development and then publication for public comment of a draft EIS and draft Terms, Conditions and Restrictions (TCRs) for TMC USA’s proposed exploration activities on the USA B area, the company said.  

Following the public comment period, the EIS will be finalized and NOAA will make a final determination on the issuance of the license and its associated TCRs. 

TMC’s bid to become the first company to gain approval to develop deep-sea minerals has been controversial. Environmental groups are calling for all activities to be banned, warning that industrial operations on the ocean floor could cause irreversible biodiversity loss. 

Earlier this year, TMC began sharing key findings from its Environmental Impact Assessment publicly as part of two new video series, highlighting how its dataset addresses environmental concerns and how innovation has reduced its environmental footprint.