Washington put 67,197,032 acres of Pacific seabed into five proposed lease areas on 17 August, with BOEM setting 16 December as the proposed auction date [E1][E2]. The parcels sit on the outer continental shelf around the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and are divided between areas east and west of the island chain [E2]. A bidder would face a minimum bonus bid of $3 million for each area and, if awarded a lease, a proposed term of 20 years [E2]. Sixty-seven million acres have thus reached the auction catalogue before a single commercial tonne has left the bottom.
The catalogue is still conditional. The 17 August document is a Proposed Leasing Notice, and BOEM must issue a Final Leasing Notice before a sale can proceed; publication of the proposal does not guarantee that the 16 December auction will occur [E1][E2]. That distinction matters because the present ledger contains acreage offered and terms proposed, not leases awarded or money paid. The first transaction remains behind another legal gate [E2].
The proposed leases cover minerals contained in polymetallic nodules, ferromanganese crusts and marine sulfide deposits [E2]. Oil, gas, sulphur and fissionable materials are reserved from the mineral rights being offered [E2]. Those categories describe what the acreage may contain and what rights could attach to a lease; they do not establish a recoverable commercial reserve or a tonne of saleable ore [E2][E5]. The mineral promise therefore sits several ledgers downstream from the acreage count.
A winning lease could permit preliminary work including surveys and sampling, subject to the notice's stipulations [E2]. Commercial extraction would require a separate Mining Plan, agency approval and further environmental review before mining could begin [E2][E5]. The environmental assessment completed for the leasing process evaluates leasing and preliminary activities, with BOEM expecting those covered impacts to be minimal; it does not clear full-scale commercial mining [E4][E5]. The sequence is acreage, lease, field work, Mining Plan, review and only then possible extraction.
The acreage also shrank between administrative stages. BOEM's March Area Identification covered about 69,101,413 acres, while the five areas carried into the proposed notice total 67,197,032 acres [E2][E3]. That leaves roughly 1.9 million fewer acres in the proposed-sale inventory than in the earlier identified area. The difference is evidence that identifying seabed and offering it for lease are separate acts, even before bidding removes another parcel from certainty.
Then-Governor David M. Apatang neither supported nor opposed the prospective leasing while seeking more information, and the governing process provides the Commonwealth an opportunity to comment [E2]. That record does not establish present-day territorial opposition, and the proposed notice does not turn consultation into consent. A Final Leasing Notice, if one follows, will show which terms and acreage survive that stage [E2]. The territorial position remains distinct from the federal auction proposal.
The counter-case is straightforward: a proposed sale can be changed, delayed or never held, a lease can yield only preliminary information, and sampled deposits can fail to become commercial ore [E1][E2][E5]. Even successful bidding would record bonus payments and lease rights before it recorded production, because extraction remains behind a Mining Plan and another environmental review [E2][E5]. For now the measurable inventory is acreage, five proposed parcels, a $3 million-per-area floor and a 20-year lease term [E2]. The physical ledger therefore closes at five auction areas and zero commercial tonnes.