Abstract I welcome this opportunity to make a presentation for the Offshore Technology Conference about new Federal regulations, which were promulgated pursuant to the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act and which are, among other things, designed to encourage the continued development of deep ocean manganese nodule mining technology. Although there have been many papers on nodule mining over the years, it is important to note that the industry is still in its development stage. In passing this law, the U.S. Congress recognized the evolving nature of the industry and the need not to stifle industrial development with unrealistic regulations. Our approach to the implementation of the statute has been within this context. The purpose of this paper is to summarize our approach in establishing this new regulatory program. The statute which we are implementing sets up a legal structure pursuant to which U.S. citizens and companies can proceed with deep seabed mining pending the entry into force for the United States of an acceptable Law of the Sea Treaty. The law thus sets up a new element of certainty that did not exist before for these U.S. companies, and. it does so in several ways. Probably first and foremost, it establishes a mechanism whereby they can obtain an exclusive priority of right to specified areas of the sea floor, within which they can continue with their seabed mining activities without interference by other miners. The statute also has some other provisions which establish more certainty for the industry. These pertain to the orderly and responsible development of the industry, as well as provisions that provide for environmental sensitivity as seabed mining progresses. In preparing to draft the regulations, before we started putting pen to paper, we sought out affected interests and initiated a dialogue to solicit their ideas on several of the issues that are set out in the statute, some of which are relatively complex. And we have developed, I believe, a good working relationship with the industry. We have found that the dialogue with the industry has been invaluable as we have been addressing some of these new and complex issues. We also talked with relevant Federal and state agencies, as well as public interest groups, to obtain the benefit of their expertise and to determine what their concerns and their thoughts were. So that by the time we developed our documents, even in draft form, we had the benefit of previous analysis and exchange with these affected interests, which was very productive and helped us to narrow our focus substantially as we proceeded. By way of example, it may be useful to focus on some specific issues we have dealt with. With respect to the purpose of an orderly and responsible progression of the industry, the statute contains several provisions. For instance, in an application, a company must demonstrate to a reasonable extent that it will have both the financial and technological capabilities to engage in the mining activities proposed in its application.