[palmfacehn]

I'm disillusioned by these headlines. Without citing the concentrations of valuable minerals the 19M statistic is meaningless. Perhaps other experts will chime in here. As I understand, minerals other than the primary target can add to the overall profitability of the enterprise. Another factor would be the ability for would be mining concerns to concentrate and extract the lithium. The US has relatively higher regulations and environmental protections than other jurisdictions.

>The oceans contain only trace amounts of gold at ten parts per quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000), but the seas are vast and have a volume of 1.335 billion kilometers. Some experts estimate up to 15,000 tons of gold in the world’s oceans.

https://learn.apmex.com/answers/how-much-gold-is-in-the-worl...

[devilbunny]

Considering that they're talking about extracting it from what are almost certainly old oil and gas wells (the depth, as well as the Smackover formation referenced in the article, as well as the fact that ExxonMobil is the one proposing this), I'd assume that a big part of this is "well, it's not producing oil and gas anymore; is there anything else valuable down there we can get to?" The sort of operation that you wouldn't be able to make profitable if starting from scratch, but since you already have a lot of the infrastructure and experience in place, it might make sense.