Abstract
Dr. Paul Knorr is a Critical Minerals Geologist with BOEM's Marine Minerals Division. Dr. Knorr provided an overview of the OCS marine minerals leasing program and discussed the types of aggregate materials and minerals under the leasing program. The leasing program consists of Non-Competitive Negotiated Agreements (NNAs), typically used for coastal resiliency projects, and competitive leasing. Since 1995, the program has executed 64 NNAs in the East Coast and Gulf of Mexico OCS regions. Dr. Knorr expanded on the NNA process, which covers federal shore protection, beach restoration, coastal wetlands restoration and federal construction projects and briefly mentioned the environmental assessment components which fall under the umbrella of the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA). Dr. Knorr touched on the domestic competitive leasing framework for commercial prospecting and leasing of marine minerals. Under the current federal regulations (30 CFR Part 581), BOEM has not yet issued a competitive lease for commercial minerals. Dr. Knorr closed the presentation with some questions for how the current regulations and leasing process may be different when considering heavy mineral processing and extraction.