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Guam legislators hold hearing backing moratorium on deep sea mining, schedule emergency session
Summary
Guam lawmakers heard hours of testimony on Jan. 7 supporting Resolution 1 32-38, which urges a moratorium on deep sea mining and objects to BOEM's RFI (docket BOEM2025-0351); no vote was taken and an emergency full-legislature session was scheduled to consider the resolution before the RFI comment deadline.
Senator Therese Terlahi chaired a Jan. 7 public hearing of the Guam Legislature’s committee on General Government Operations and Appropriations on Resolution 1 32-38, which would reaffirm Guam’s call for a moratorium on deep sea mining and formally object to the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s request for information on commercial leasing offshore the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (BOEM docket BOEM2025-0351).
The hearing drew agency officials, scientists, legal experts and dozens of residents. Testimony united around concerns about scientific uncertainty, cultural and economic harms, and what witnesses described as an insufficient federal comment period. Julian Ogin, an attorney with Blue Ocean Law, told the committee that "the RFI rests on a deeply flawed assumption that the United States may unilaterally authorize seabed mineral extraction in the waters of Guam and the CNMI without consultation or consent" and argued the RFI and process are legally and procedurally deficient.
Why it matters: witnesses…
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