For those interested in offshore mining OPEX CAPEX. As a rought...

For those interested in offshore mining OPEX CAPEX.

As a rought guide, we have Neptune Minerals listed on London SE(LSE-AIM:NPM). They are in the business of mining very high grade minerals in very deep waters (>1000m), see http://www.neptuneminerals.com/images/stories/pdf_documents/presentations/northern_asia_metal_mining_forum_-_shanghai_may_08.pdf).

+ Technip costing is based on crawling seafloor miner, seafloor crusher, flexible riser using an air-injected lifting system and mining vessel with storage and offtake.
–Indicated capex for above system is US$501M
–Mining, lifting & off-take operating cost US$91/t (6000 tpd)
+ Neptune assume a 10 yr SMS production at 2Mtpa (including full capex and opex) equals US$162/t.

For Neptune it sounds like heavy duty stuff, so I would expect much less cost for mining unconsilidated (no crushing required) marine sediments on the continental shelf (<300m depth).

Cheers