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1) According to a recent presentation by S&P Global Market Intelligence mining and metals team, there seems to be a large gap between copper mining companies' profits and capital spending. For the past two years, the topline earnings were larger than $100 billion, while expansion budgets haven't moved much, if at all. The small expansion that did happen was mostly concentrated on brownfield projects, with only 15 new mines over the past 4 years, versus 32 over the same period a decade ago. In 2015, when copper mining profits reached just over $30 billion, the industry sent 12 new mines into production. Mitzi Sumangil, associate analyst at the research firm said: "Companies have been recently focusing on extending the life of mines, especially of those high-grade ones and already profitable projects because, let’s be honest, it takes a lot of time to develop something new and it takes a lot of administrative effort." With countries trying to avoid the mining industry, it's no surprise that mining companies are trying to avoid greenfield projects.
Source: CHARTS: Copper mining profits top $100 billion a year, but where are the new mines? - MINING.COM
2) Norway is looking at an area of ocean that is nearly the size of Germany to allow for deep-sea mining, as it looks to become the first country to extract metals from its sea floor. Norway's energy minister will be submitting a proposal to open the large area to applications for exploration and extraction, which would face a parliamentary vote in the fall. The area in question may contain an estimated 38 million tons of copper, which is more than what is mined around the world each year. Even with the potential of this to supply and speed up the green transition to help the world produce cleaner energy, Norway's environmental agency has strongly opposed the plan saying that there could be "significant and irreversible consequences for the marine environment." The Norwegian is talking out of both sides of its mouth, as it wants to transition, but doesn't have the necessary minerals to do so. This is true with countries all around the world, including the US and some countries in the European Union.