Deep Sea Mining: Exploration Rights under the ISA Regulation

In the first part of a series explaining international deep mining regulations, Louise Woods and Elena Guillet share advice on entering into sponsorship agreements between contractors and sponsoring countries.

ISA has successfully developed exploration regulations and has been working on exploitation regulations since 2014.

Entities operating in the deep sea mining sector will not only have to comply with this regime, but will also be obliged to comply with the provisions of several other agreements, such as, for example, the operating agreement between ISA and the contractor, the sponsoring agreement between the sponsoring state and the contractor, the national law of the sponsoring state and the general international law.

This complex regulatory regime provides for different dispute resolution processes for deep sea mining operators, depending on the type of dispute arising. This three-part series explores the different contract and dispute resolution options available to different entities.

Read part one Mining technology.