Mining Moana, Selling the Sovereignty
US-led billion-dollar mining play is quietly consolidating control over Cook Islands seabed
The Cook Islands was promised a mineral windfall. Instead, a Wall Street-backed US entity is moving to consolidate control of its seabed riches. As billions line up and sovereignty blurs, the question isn’t what lies beneath the ocean—but who ultimately owns it, profits from it, and bears the cost if it goes wrong.
The Cook Islands sold deep-sea mining on a promise: trillions of dollars of rare minerals lying quietly on the ocean floor, there for the taking.
What is emerging instead looks less like a national windfall and more like external capture. A new US-led entity, American Ocean Minerals (AOM), is positioning itself to aggregate those Cook’s seabed assets under a Wall Street–centred structure.
Its slogan is explicit — “Declaring America’s Mineral Independence.” The ocean in question is not American. It is Moana, the South Pacific.
The Cook Islands, thanks to its 2.32 million km² exclusive economic zone, ranks among the largest countries in the world by area. Yet it has a population of just 13,000 and sits within the Realm of New Zealand — self-governing, but not fully sovereign. That tension surfaced recently in its dispute with Wellington over Prime Minister Mark Brown’s attempted China agreement.
While political attention focused on Beijing, the more consequential shift was happening elsewhere. As reported here in 2023, the real courtship was not Chinese, but American — miners and financiers moving quietly into position.
The Cook Islands granted three exploration licences covering roughly 254,000 km² — about the size of the United Kingdom. Early exploration has pointed to vast polymetallic nodule fields. That helps explain why, largely out of public view, capital and political backing have followed.
