Norway\u2019s minority government should withdraw its proposal to open a vast Arctic offshore area to deep sea mining and call at least a 10-year moratorium on the activity, its key backer in parliament, said.
Norway could become the first nation to make deep sea mining happen on a commercial scale if the country\u2019s parliament approves a plan to open ocean an area larger than the United Kingdom to the new industry. The mining could provide a source for such metals as copper and rare earth elements for the transition away from fossil fuels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Labour-led government, which also includes the Centre Party, relies on a smaller leftwing party, the Socialist Left (SV), for support to pass its budget and other key policies in parliament.
\u201cWe will not vote for the proposal that the government has put forward. We think that it should be sent back to the government,\u201d Lars Haltbrekken, SV\u2019s spokesman on energy and environment, told Reuters.
\u201cWe would like to have a moratorium for at least 10 years so that we can find out more (about the environmental consequences) before we start digging for minerals on the seabed,\u201d he added.
Haltbrekken said SV was still discussing a list of its demands for the upcoming fiscal budget, to be presented on October 6.
He did not say whether SV would make support for the government\u2019s budget conditional on the issue.
The government could still win the approval with support from the main opposition Conservative party, which initiated the opening process in 2020, as well as the right-wing Progress Party.
Still, Haltbrekken said deep sea mining was \u201chigh on our agenda\u201d and \u201can important issue for us.\u201d
In 2021, SV blocked the government\u2019s plans to conduct oil and gas exploration licensing round in frontier areas.
Parliament is set to discuss the government\u2019s bill this autumn, although a specific date for debates has yet to be set.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Norway\u2019s minority government should withdraw its proposal to open a vast Arctic offshore area to deep sea mining and call at least a 10-year moratorium on the activity, its key backer in parliament, said. Norway could become the first nation…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":900,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=899"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":901,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899\/revisions\/901"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}