The “Blue Gold” Rush

The U.S.–China rivalry has plunged into the depths of the Pacific Ocean, in a high-stakes race for the metals that will fuel the 21st century.

In the Clarion–Clipperton Zone, between Hawaii and Mexico, massive machines crawl 3,000 meters below the surface, scooping up shiny, golf ball–sized nodules rich in cobalt, nickel, and manganese. Once untouched for millions of years, the ocean floor has become the newest frontier of global power.

These minerals – dubbed “blue gold” – are the hidden fuel of the battery age: powering electric cars, renewable energy, advanced electronics, and even sensitive defense technologies. For Washington and Beijing, the prize is not only economic dominance but also strategic control across the Indo-Pacific.

“A Strategic Necessity”

“Deep-sea mining is part of broader U.S. efforts to secure critical mineral supplies outside China’s grip,” Tom LaTourette, a geologist at the RAND Corporation, told Alhurra. He calls it both a commercial opportunity and a security imperative.

For Beijing, the calculus is just as clear. The seabed is “an opportunity to expand control over critical resources and feed underused domestic refining capacity,” Chinese officials argue.

The Pacific as a Battleground

The International Energy Agency projects demand for lithium, cobalt, and nickel will rise four to six times by 2040. Today, China controls up to 70% of global production of these minerals and 85% of refining capacity – giving it a chokehold over U.S. industries from EVs to defense systems.

“The United States wants to reduce its reliance on China for critical minerals,”,” Lisa Levin, professor emeritus of biological oceanography at UC San Diego, told Alhurra. “That’s partly about EV demand, but largely geopolitical.”

Both powers are vying for influence with Pacific Island nations – Fiji, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands – whose vast exclusive economic zones make them gatekeepers of seabed wealth and potential military footholds.

Dual-Use Technology, Military Concerns

What worries Washington most, analysts say, is China’s development of dual-use technologies. Autonomous underwater vehicles deployed for “mining” could just as easily gather intelligence or map naval routes. “Under the guise of commercial extraction, verifying China’s activities becomes nearly impossible,” noted a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

U.S. allies Australia and New Zealand share those fears. Meanwhile, Washington is shoring up its own alliances, striking a minerals partnership with the Cook Islands in August. The country’s seabed alone is estimated to hold 6.7 billion metric tons of mineral deposits, including enough cobalt to produce 20 million tons annually.

America’s Handicap

The U.S. faces a legal and institutional dilemma. Unlike China, Washington has never ratified the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. That leaves it with observer status only in the International Seabed Authority, the body setting mining rules. “It weakens U.S. influence,” Douglas McCauley, an ocean scientist at UC Santa Barbara, told Alhurra.

Even if the U.S. secures minerals, McCauley warns, “they’ll still likely be sent to China for refining—unless America builds its own capacity, which takes years, even decades.”

The Environmental Reckoning

Deep-sea mining hasn’t yet gone commercial, but trial operations already raise alarms. Massive remote-controlled harvesters scrape the seabed, sucking up nodules while destroying fragile habitats and releasing stored carbon.

“There are still huge reserves on land – in Greenland, in Ukraine,” Levin told Alhurra. “The world must decide whether it’s worth sacrificing one of the last untouched ecosystems on Earth.”

In the rush for blue gold, the deepest parts of the ocean – once humanity’s last frontier – may be the first casualty. The open question: can the world balance mineral hunger with ocean preservation, or will the great-power race impose an environmental price all must pay?