Norway’s parliament deal marks a significant step towards seabed mining.

According to statements made on Tuesday, Norway’s minority government and two opposition parties have agreed to permit seabed mineral exploitation in the Arctic area. This is a significant step toward the implementation of full-scale ocean mining.

Despite worries over the impact on the environment and requests for a moratorium from across the world, Norway has reached an agreement in the hopes of being the first nation to successfully implement deep-sea mining on a commercial scale. This would provide Norway with the opportunity to secure essential minerals and jobs.

During the exploratory phase, the revised version of the government’s proposal, which will be publicly debated by parliament on January 4 and then put to a vote, establishes environmental survey standards that are more stringent than those that were initially envisaged.

Additionally, the agreement grants the parliament the authority to decide later whether or not to authorize full-scale mining based on the information obtained from the deep-sea environment during the initial exploration.

The agreement was reached between the two parties in the minority administration, Labour and the Centre Party, and the opposition Conservatives and the Progress Party, which resulted in a comfortable majority for the governing coalition.

According to Baard Ludvig Thorheim, a member of parliament for the Conservatives, the environmental threshold for seabed mining had been set pretty high in the updated plan. This information was provided to Reuters.

“We believe, and hope, it will become the international standard for this activity,” stated the president. “At the same time it is important that it is a framework that is predictable for commercial players, on which we rely on for these activities.”

According to him, the parties had engaged in a heated discussion on how to strike a balance between the necessity of environmental regulations and the commercial feasibility of those businesses that are interested in beginning maritime mining.

“If the demands are too steep and too complicated, there won’t be any interest, but at the same time it is also in these companies’ interest to partake in an activity that has a good reputation and adheres to demands on sustainability,” said the researcher.

Loke Marine Minerals, a start-up firm specializing in seabed mining and benefiting from investors such as the oil service giant Technip FMC and the Norwegian marine group Wilhelmsen, expressed their satisfaction with the decision.

“Great day not only for Norway but for the world,” said Walter Sognnes Norway, CEO of Loke Europe, in an interview with Reuters. “We need to have a fact- based evaluation of deep sea minerals as a provider of critical minerals for the green energy transition.”

Despite this, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) stated that the decision to move forward was detrimental to Norway’s reputation for ocean preservation. However, the WWF also expressed optimism that parliament would finally prevent any move toward full-scale mining.