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Japan to search seafloors for rare metals: report
AFP - Monday, April 26
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Japan to search seafloors for rare metals: report
TOKYO (AFP) - – Japan plans to scour the seafloors in its exclusive economic zone for rare metals needed in high-tech products in a drive that may irritate Asian rival China, a report said Monday.
Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's cabinet is expected to approve as early as June the national strategy on securing undersea resources, the Kyodo News agency reported, citing a copy of the government document.
Japan and its Asian rivals are scrambling to secure rare metals needed for a range of products from fuel-efficient hybrid cars and batteries to cellphones and liquid crystal display televisions.
Last year the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology announced plans to send robotic submarines to study areas near seabed volcanos, where so-called hydrothermal vents belch out minerals.
Experts believe exploiting those remote and hard-to-reach deposits will become feasible despite the huge technical challenges and expense, as certain minerals become more scarce worldwide.
Under the new strategy, resource-poor Japan eyes exploring the seabed within its exclusive economic zone (EEZ), an area which extends 200 nautical miles (370 kilometres) offshore or to the half-way points to neighbouring countries.
The areas to be explored cover 340,000 square kilometres (136,000 square miles) of the East China Sea and the Pacific, Kyodo said.
One search area will stretch from the median line between Japan and China to the Okinawa island chain in the East China Sea, the report said.
Another area to be explored lies around the Izu-Ogasawara islands, an archipelago that stretches south of Tokyo into the Pacific, it said.
Japan will also scour the seafloors off the island of Shikoku, seeking methane hydrate, a compound that may become a new energy source and which Japan hopes to start using by around 2020, Kyodo said.
Japan also eyes exploring the seabed around Minamitorishima island, the nation's easternmost point, to search for cobalt, the report said.
The project may stir friction with China, the rising economic giant and Japan's main competitor for mineral and energy resources.
Ties between Tokyo and Beijing have already been strained over four Chinese gas fields in the East China Sea that Japan says extend into its EEZ.
The two countries are also disputing sovereignty of the Senkaku islands, known as the Diaoyu islands in Chinese, which lie between Japan and Taiwan.
Tensions have grown as China has built up its military muscle including its naval power in recent years.
Japan last week protested at a high-seas incident in which a Chinese naval helicopter from a flotilla of warships staged a close fly-by of a Japanese naval vessel, the second such incident within weeks.
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