Good morning everyone, and welcome to this fourth quarter conference call for Green Minerals. My name is Ståle Rodahl. I'm the chairman of the company, and I'm here with our CEO, Ståle Monstad. Before I hand it over to Ståle, just want to make some initial remarks. Having finished 2022, I'm pleased to see that the company has delivered on all targets set out for the year. That includes conducting our first research cruise, also completing a world-first metallurgy study of its kind on SMS ore. Also, we have received a vast amount of data from the NPD, and we started incorporating this in our exploration models. Last but not least, we have expanded our partner network, last by signing an agreement with a globally battery manufacturer in the fourth quarter.
2023 sets out to be a defining year for the company. Our main goal for the year is to obtain a license. Therefore, I'm truly excited to see that we have signed an MoU on a really large polymetallic nodule license in the CCZ in January. Just to give you an idea about the size of this license, the license area constitute more than 160 oil and gas-type North Sea blocks. It contains, based on exploration data, more than 200 million tons of measured, indicated, and inferred wet nodules combined over the license area.
With the CCC and the Norwegian Continental Shelf as strategic priorities, for the companies, the long-awaited Mining Code from the International Seabed Authority that is expected to come this year, along with the opening decision in Norway, are key events for Green Minerals in 2023. I am pleased with the rapid progress the company has made so far. In my opinion, the early mover status and going public at an early stage has been beneficial, from an industrial standpoint and served our shareholders well. We are now in a good position to capitalize on the expected opening decision in these two key areas. With that, I hand it over to you, Ståle.
Thank you very much, Ståle. I'll continue with the outline for the presentation. I will go through the 4th-quarter highlights, the milestones that we set in 2022, and also the key objectives of 2023. There were some important events happening just over into the new year, so we will talk a bit about subsequent events in January. I will dive, not a deep dive, but a little bit into polymetallic nodules before I continue with the strategic priorities and operations and financials. For Q4, the highlights in last quarter was that the consortium that is led by Oil States Industries, where we are a partner, started working on a concept study for the harsh environment deep-sea mining system.
This consortium is put together with some of the best actors or players in the deep-sea mining industry. It's a young industry, but these guys have been delivering equipment to the activities that has been performed so far. We also signed a frame agreement with an international battery manufacturer. In January, more things happened really. Ståle mentioned the MoU with the license holder in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in Pacific. The public hearing of the environmental impact assessment was finished in January, and NPD published their resource assessment for Norway. On the right-hand side, it's a snip from NPD's webpage. It's in Norwegian, but it's the headline is, "Large resources on the Norwegian shelf," which of course is encouraging for us.
Going into the financial highlights, we had our first revenue ever in the fourth quarter. It's a small amount, but still is the first revenue, and it's from the previously announced agreement we have with the battery manufacturer. We have a run rate or burn rate in the company of roughly NOK 10 million per year, and this is expected to continue in the years to come. We are at the moment debt-free, and the cash balance was a bit over NOK 20 million, NOK 21.3 million at the end of fourth quarter last year, and the equity ratio is 96%. To the milestones we set for 2022, we did complete all of them.
We had our first research cruise to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, together with Project ULTRA, where we have two PhD students working on the project. We have carried out the first phase of a metallurgy study on SMS material, which is important for the processing part of this industry, and we will continue that study also this year. NPD released a large amount of data last year. We have started, and we have integrated this data into our expression framework and models. We are working hard on establishing an ecosystem around this industry with partners. We are looking for partners, and we are connecting to partners both in Norway and internationally. This is, of course, a continuous process.
If we take a look into the next year, the first and most important objective for us is to get a license. We will secure a license in 2023. We started out good this year with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding for a large license in the CCC, and there are several other opportunities also internationally that we are currently evaluating. We would also go out on a new research cruise in the last part of 2023 to the same area out on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge with Project ULTRA. As I said, we will continue the analysis we do on the SMS material. This year we will focus on the processing part, not the mineral characterization like we did last year.
We will, of course, continue to work with to establish partnerships throughout the value chain. A little bit back to the MoU we signed. We signed on a large license like Ståle just mentioned, with a significant resource potential. The exploration work on this license is to large degree already done. There is a little bit missing on the environmental baselining, and the inferred indicated the measured resources are really, really large, more than 200 million tons of wet nodules. We have exclusivity during this negotiation period. What is a nodule compared to a seafloor massive sulfide? I will just give a brief explanation of that.
We in Green Minerals had a initial focus on seafloor massive sulfides, which is a three-dimensional, relatively limited in the areal extent deposit. We have now added nodules, which is a different commodity. It's actually not not a rock. It's not need no mining needed. You just have to harvest these rocks that sits on the bottom. It's a larger area. It's a two-dimensional deposit. You just go on the surface. It has a different composition also compared to seafloor massive sulfides. So the nodules are often be called a battery in a rock, it contains 4 very critical metals for battery production.
That is copper, cobalt, manganese, and nickel, and there's actually no known ore on land, on shore that has the composition of all these four metals in, in one single ore. Also, unlike land ores, nodules do not contain any toxic levels of heavy elements, which is an important environmental factor. As I said, the resource assessment, the exploration work has been done on the license, meaning that as soon as they open up for production in the ISA area, in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, we are more or less ready to go on this license as well. What is the difference between a nodule and an SMS?
The SMS is mainly a copper play, with some interesting levels of cobalt also being present, while the nodules are a battery play, to put it very simple. Back to Norway. We still believe that we can create a very efficient and low emission value chain in the Nordic countries. The actual sailing distance from the Mohn's Ridge, for instance, to harbors in northern Norway is relatively short compared to what you have in other areas in the world, for example, the Pacific. In addition, we have all the infrastructure in place with the railroad covering Sweden, Norway, and Finland, and all the gray buildings here are representative of battery gigafactories, either already built or under construction. The yellow and green are existing processing plants for copper ore.
We can actually create an entire value chain in the Nordic countries with the ore being mined offshore, transported to a harbor and distributed on a railroad to the processing plants and sold to battery factories. Also interestingly, the NPD resource report had some quite high numbers for some key metals. If we look at, for instance, copper, the estimation from NPD was more than or almost 2 times the annual global production of copper in the world, and also very healthy values on gold and silver. Cobalt in the SMS deposits is estimated to be 6 times almost of the annual production in the world.
It's quite a significant potential out on the Norwegian sector. To work with this, like I said, we have established a partnership led by a consortium led by Ørsted, to come up with a concept for the harsh environment that we see in Norwegian waters, and a deep-sea mining system that is gonna tackle all this harsh environment. Like I said, OSI has delivered risers for Allseas, The Metals Company's test in the Pacific, also to a Japanese consortium working on SMS, and the same goes for SMD and RISE have delivered equipment to these operations. It's a very experienced and competent consortium that we are part of. In Norway also, all the schedule so far has, is holding up. Everything is ticked off when it should be ticked off.
Like I said, the public consultation finished in January. We believe that the most likely date for the opening decision would be sometimes before summer once the parliament have discussed the proposition from the department. That is good news. It's been like this for two years. There's no change to the schedule, the authorities have been following up on the promises all along. If we look at the aspirational targets for please, Green Minerals, we are now expanding a bit from being focused more or less only on the region sector to also include the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the Pacific Ocean. Like I said, the geological work on the license we're working on there is complete exploration work.
It's a very, very significant resource potential on this license. We, as in Norway, we aim for asset light strategy to minimize the CapEx and include industry partners in this activity. Stretch target for production start for the Pacific Ocean is 2026. No change for the Norwegian stretch targets. We aim for production in 2028 as sort of the earliest time we can start there. The numbers that we are presented earlier also show very healthy commercial aspect around this project. This is for Norway. This is for SMS in Norway. And given 1.5 million ton annual ore production for 1 production unit, more than half a billion US dollar on the copper alone.
This is, the way we see it, a very, very attractive project also in Norway. If you look at the recent industry developments, we see that Cook Islands was the first country out to actually hand out exploration license within their exclusive economic zone. Three licenses was awarded. As a response to that, consortium took a minority stake in one of the operators at an estimated $10 million in cash and $10 million in kind. Also in the Pacific, things are happening. The Metals Company successfully completed an integrated pilot test. That means bringing actually nodules from the sea floor to the production ship at the surface.
They brought 3,000 tons up in this test through a riser system that was delivered by OSI. Further consortium just recently announced that they have taken a minority stake in the Belgian company Global Sea Mineral Resources and their license in Clarion-Clipperton Zone. They are starting to move also the oil and gas contractors. To sum up, Green Minerals are still a pioneer and a front runner in marine minerals in Norway, but with the signature of the MoU and the work we have ahead of us there, we are also approaching license status internationally much earlier than previously guided. The opening decision in Norway is expected within 4-7 months, and like I said, the public consultation was completed last month. USA and E.U. are very focused on this, and they have been.
A number of occasions been talking about the critical minerals and how important it is to the national security for the Western countries. Finally, the large oil and gas contractors are starting to take positions in the deep-sea mining industry, really shedding light on the industry values. By then, I open up for Q&A.
Yeah.
Of course, those of you who are used to this, there is a Q&A button on your screen, so please ask questions there if you like. We have 2 questions that we have received by mail here previous to the presentation, so I'll try to do those that haven't been covered already. One is, can you please describe the progress in the CCZ license? What can we expect next to help us value the company? When can we expect a reserve report or any other data out of the license?
Yeah. Progress there is first we need to transfer this MoU to a firm contract. We're working on that, working hard and setting up meetings to that, to that end. When it comes to research report and value of the license itself, it's very much dependent on the opening, actually start of production in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. We know that The Metals Company have announced that they intend to start this year. ISA has announced that the initial, at least, deadline for the Mining Code was July 2023. We are, of course, watching that very carefully. The reserves in this license that we are negotiating on have been mapped quite well already.
As is normal, you take a small area of this very large license, and you do a very detailed analysis there, and then you can classify it as reserves, and that has been done also on this license. The rest of the license is less investigated, in less details, and that is why it is classifiable as indicated and inferred, the remainder of the nodules. This is quite a common way of doing it. It's the same way it's done by The Metals Company and GSR as well. The actual reserve report will be sort of public once a decision to start mining has been done.
Yep. When a commercial decision has been made.
Mm.
Can you describe the political landscape in Norway when it comes to opening up for marine minerals?
Yes. The political landscape in Norway is quite sort of positive to deep-sea mining. It is, has been, it has been a number of discussions with politicians from different parties, so far there has been very little resistance and much support for this industry. We also see that the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy and the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, which is responsible for the mapping, is very, very positive like I said, they keep to schedule. Everything is kept as promised so far. You never know what happens in discussions in the Storting. All the indications we have so far is positive.
Okay. There's another one on the Clarion-Clipperton Zone. When do you expect the Mining Code from the International Seabed Authority to be released?
A difficult question to answer because the original deadline for that was July 2023. They have told us that they will be running a bit late. On top of that, there is this Two-year rule. It's a bit too much to go into in detail. The Two-year rule means that when a country or a license holder is asking permission to start mining, if it don't have reply within 2 years, they can go ahead and start mining, and this is what The Metals Company are currently contemplating doing. It's hard to say when the Mining Code will be finished. They're working hard on it, I know that.
I know that Norway is involved and also working hard on completing and finishing the work around the Mining Code. We'll just have to wait and see.
Yeah. Okay. Plans are for the early movers there to start production in 2024?
That is the current plan, yeah, for the early movers. Like I said, if it goes ahead and opens up, ISA will probably have to complete their Mining Code as well. Then this license we are negotiating on are more or less ready to go.
All right. Okay. I think... We have some other stuff here, but that has been well covered, I think, during the presentation. I can't see any other questions here. With that, I think we'll end this presentation here. Please just get in contact with us, write mails, if there are any other questions popping up after the presentation. Thank you very much. See you in 3 months or so.