History

The Kennecott Consortium was active in Deep Sea Mining in the 1970s. Although they were ultimately not commercially successful, they nonetheless pioneered many of the technologies and processes that are used today.

There is a long and interesting history of deep sea mining projects in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone; from the operations of the Kennecott Consortium in the 1970s, through to ongoing work by The Metals Company.

This is the draft Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) submitted by the Kennecott Consortium to NOAA in May 1984, to support deep sea mining in the Clarion Clipperton Zone.

Hughes Glomar Explorer was built in 1973 as a deep sea mining production support vessel. However, this was a CIA cover-story to hide a clandestine project to recover a Soviet nuclear submarine.

Project Azorian was a huge covert CIA operation that combined deep sea mining, a billionaire industrialist, a sunken submarine, and cold war espionage.