(MENAFN) According to a Friday declaration from the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD), the huge continental shelf of Norway has been found to have significant metal and mineral reserves.
Based on the reports, the significant finding presents one of the largest producers of oil and gas with the opportunity to harvest "substantial" quantities of minerals, including copper and rare earth metals.
Kjersti Dahle, NPD's head of technology and analysis, remarked “of the metals found on the seabed in the study area, magnesium, niobium, cobalt and rare earth minerals are found on the European Commission's list of critical minerals.”
Preliminary estimates indicate that polymetallic sulphides in distant regions of the Norwegian Sea and Greenland Sea contain 85,000 tons of silver, 2,317 tons of gold, 45 million tons of zinc, and 38 million tons of copper, about twice as much as is extracted annually worldwide.
It is anticipated that the 24 million tons of magnesium, 3.1 million tons of cobalt, and 1.7 million tons of cerium, a rare earth metal used in alloys, are hidden behind the manganese crusts that have developed on bedrock over millions of years. They are estimated to also include rare earth elements including neodymium, yttrium, and dysprosium, as well as 8.4 million tons of titanium and 1.9 million tons of vanadium.
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