Nodules and crust economics: relationship between cobalt and nickel price

This paper compares the economic feasibility of two deep seabed mining deposits, manganese nodules and cobalt crust using a new quantitative indicator, the cobalt/nickel price ratio, that verifies the equality between the net present value (NPV) of the two resources. NPV is based on two different models, a multi-period and a singleperiod time cash-flow. In both cases results are similar and show that the current price of nickel could produce equality between NPV of manganese nodules and cobalt crust only if the cobalt price were several hundreds dollars per kg. Results are based on cost of mining estimated by Yamazaki for Japanese licensed deposits, and can be used as a guide in the absence of more recent commercially-derived cost models.