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- Title
Marine Resources: The Economics of U.S. Ocean Policy.
- Authors
Crutchfield, James A.
- Abstract
The article examines the economics of the U.S. ocean policy. Man has learned to produce useful power from tidal sources from several places at a cost about four or five times greater than the next best alternative. This, combined with overwhelming problems of conflict with competing users, suggests that the U.S. will find little of interest in this source of energy. Fresh water seems another major resource of the sea; in our time desalinated water will not be feasible at prices approaching the incremental cost of water from more conventional surface sources, at least as far as the U.S. generally is concerned. The oceanic exploitation of hard rock minerals (compacted minerals) would require a true mining operation. At present there are none; we have neither the means to locate nor the technology to recover and process any compacted, hard rock mineral at the present time. No known authority feels that it is even remotely in prospect. Unconsolidated minerals represent greater prospects. The most important current operations, by a considerable margin, consist of inshore dredging of sand and gravel. The United Kingdom, Japan, the U.S., and a number of other countries continue to recover substantial amounts of sand and gravel from the sea. Prospective future enterprises in unconsolidated minerals include phosphates from phosphorite nodules and ferromanganese nodules. Regarding the former, land based supplies of phosphates for fertilizer will continue to be of more uniform and better quality and lower priced than any possible phosphate production from the ocean for at least the next three or four decades.
- Subjects
UNITED States; MARINE resources policy; MARINE resources development; SAND &; gravel dredging; PHOSPHATES
- Publication
American Economic Review, 1979, Vol 69, Issue 2, p266
- ISSN
0002-8282
- Publication type
Article