NEW YORK, March 28, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - A Canadian mining firm seeking to become the first company allowed to excavate seabeds in international waters said Thursday it will seek US authorization, as negotiations over global regulations drag on.

"We believe the United States offers a stable, transparent, and enforceable regulatory path," The Metals Company CEO Gerard Barron said, in a statement.

The announcement comes as members of the Jamaica-based International Seabed Authority (ISA) continue to debate a global mining code, more than a decade in the making.

"It is our strong belief that this path offers the greatest probability of receiving a commercial permit to begin operations in a timely manner," Barron told a conference call, explaining the decision to seek authorization under US law after the "repeated failures" of the ISA to reach an agreement.

The Metals Company had announced in late 2024 that it would seek the world's first permit from the ISA on June 27, 2025, via its subsidiary Nauru Ocean Resources Inc (Nori).

The company hopes to extract polymetallic nodules -- stone-like mineral deposits made up of prized metals such as cobalt, manganese, nickel and copper -- from the Pacific seabed.

The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea gives the ISA responsibility for regulating extraction of the minerals that lie outside national marine borders.

But the body, which currently only awards exploration licenses, has been negotiating for more than ten years over a mining code to regulate the sector.

An ongoing negotiating session in Kingston, Jamaica has failed to produce any breakthroughs, as scientists, NGOs and a growing number of governments express consternation over threats to marine ecosystems posed by the mining.

With no mining code in sight, any application The Mining Company submitted in June would fall into legal limbo.

The company, via its American subsidiary, will instead seek approval from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), under a 1980 law establishing US rules for international seabed exploitation, it said.

The United States is not a member of the ISA nor the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

The Metals Company has indicated it will specify which areas it will include in its contract at a later date.