March 21st, 2010 
The National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) in India’s motto is “The Technology for Harnessing the Wealth of the Ocean Starts Here.” In April, NIOT will start the next phase of fields trials at 1000m for deep-sea mining equipment. Trials of the crawler were already successfully completed at 500 meters.
Why such the interest in deep-sea mining with initial costs near Us $32 million?
The Indian Ministry of Earth Sciences has taken a lease from the International Seabed Authority on 75,000 sq km in the Indian Ocean (map from the ISA of the mining province here). The manganese nodules and other rare minerals present in the sector are conservatively worth Us $50 billion. Thankfully the crawler will not be ready for operations for another 2 years.
It will be prudent if government create a review mechanism on government spending especially on R&D activities. NIOT holding OTEC project since 18 years with expenditure of about 200 crores. Deep Sea Mining Project with initial target of 500 metres has now been scaled up to 1000 metres – what are the success rate of NIOT R&D activities and at what cost. Sagar Nidhi costing about Rs.300.00 crores is launched about 4 years back and Crawler is available since 12 years. What is holding to bring success – It is high time for government to bring a transparent white paper on R&D spending – otherwise government spending only will help in maintaining white elephant at the cost of public.
[...] NIOT will starts the next phase of fields trials at 1000m for deep-sea mining equipment [...]
[...] NIOT will starts the next phase of fields trials at 1000m for deep-sea mining equipment [...]
[...] NIOT will starts the next phase of fields trials at 1000m for deep-sea mining equipment [...]