Plans by Swiss-Dutch offshore giant Allseas to operate machinery for deep sea mining firm The Metals Company under unilateral U.S. authorization directly violate the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea
Plans by Swiss-Dutch offshore giant Allseas to operate machinery for deep sea mining firm The Metals Company under unilateral U.S. authorization directly violate the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), according to a legal opinion commissioned by Greenpeace Netherlands.
The legal opinion by Professor André Nollkaemper of the University of Amsterdam notes that the binding May 2026 Contract for Development Work and Commercial Production between Allseas and The Metals Company (TMC) includes activities prohibited under international law. According to Nollkaemper the threat is “no longer a hypothetical prospect but a present and advancing fact.”
Consequently, the obligation on the Dutch government to intervene “is already engaged,” as the agreement binds Allseas to an operation relying entirely on a “unilateral United States route.”
Under UNCLOS, the international seabed is protected from unilateral exploitation, granting sole regulatory jurisdiction to the International Seabed Authority (ISA). Professor Nollkaemper’s legal evaluation outlines explicit obligations to be followed by the Dutch state. In addition to being the largest strategic shareholder and investor in TMC, Allseas owns and operates the world’s only functional deep sea mining vessel, retrofitted specifically to extract mineral-rich polymetallic nodules from the abyssal ocean floor.
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