we are talking about billions and billions of tons of these over millions of square miles. This is the Clarion Clipperton Zone which is just one of these fields but happens to be the one closest to North America. There are dozens more of these fields around the planet.
As the world struggles to end the use of fossil fuels, the need for batteries which are small, light and have high amp/hr capacity is the critical part of the equation and these nodules are filled with the minerals needed to manufacture them which quote frankly cannot be mined from land based deposits in the quantities needed.
I donât see where anyone said they werenât; however they are only Swiss in that they are registered there and have an empty office and a tax attorney. The other six thousand or so employees are based out of their operational headquarters in Houston. As c.captain indicated, it would be in their, and their majority US based employees interests to see idle rigs repurposed.
Itâs laughable when you see people wanting governments to bail out struggling oil and gas companies who have spent decades siphoning off their profits through tax haves like Panama and Switzerland etc.
Why should governments bail out companies who in the past have gone to a great extent not to pay any tax to any non tax haven government, it just doesnât make sense.
You are right that Transocean*s corporate HQ in Zug, Switzerland is just a shell, while the operational HQ is still in Houston. The majority of the corporate and administrative staff in Houston is probably Americans, but there are a lot of operational personnel that is Green Card holders.
The rig crews in the GoM are of course mostly Americans (by Law) but you donât find a lot of Americans on the rigs operating in other parts of the world these days.
The regional Transocean offices around the world has the daily operational responsibilities for the rigs in their region and are mostly manned locally and by an international band of Expats.
so does Transocean pay tax in the USA?
Probably not after the license fee paid to the Swiss office or somewhere else, take a page from Apple and Googles play book
Allseas are doing that in partnership with a company called DeepGreen, they have some interesting videos on the vimeo page, seabed mining is a topic I knew almost nothing about so it is quite informative to hear about it:
I knew about the seafloor nodules for quite some time but did not realize until quite recently that there is tremendous work being done at the moment in preparation for the time the balloon goes up and this whole show gets going. It all has to do with the minerals like cobalt these nodules contain and how desperately the global battery industry is trying to find a source which will be able to supply what is soon to be an insatiable demand. Deep Green is right across the border from me they seem to be well positioned. One must wonder where their backing comes from?
Neither side saw this coming along with Lives Mattering, Defunding the Police and a bunch of other social justice issues. The right and left are just hoping that people donât realize this cause of all this is the right and left working togwether to keep all others out. They also hope the unwashed masses (us) do not decide to âcorrectâ or âdisposeâ of them.
Politics is a multi-billion dollar a year industry and our âleadersâ donât want to lose their jobs eitherâŚ
Many of the Caribbean islands are accepting US citizens, with restrictions, as are the Bahamas. I guess if your economy is dependent on tourism you roll the dice. Not many first world countries accept US citizens now without some serious restrictions. Canât say that I blame them. The USA has been near the top in cases for awhile but it looks like the EU may be trying to catch up.
