Dr. John Halkyard

Founder & Director

Dr. John Halkyard is an Ocean Engineer and active in deep ocean projects involving mining and oil & gas since the late ’60s.  He was the Director of the Ocean Mining Laboratory for the Kennecott Manganese Nodule Consortium in the 1970s and led the successful mining system development effort.

From 1988 – 2000 he was Technical Director for the Deep Oil Technology, Inc., which successfully developed and commercialized a proprietary deep water oil and gas platform, the “Spar”. From 2000 – 2007 he served as the Vice President R&D and Chief Technical Adviser for Aker Maritime, Inc. which was acquired by Technip, the world’s largest energy engineering and project service company.

Following his retirement from Technip in 2007 he continued consulting on deep-sea mining and ocean renewables while serving as Visiting Professor at the National University of Singapore. In 2011 he co-founded Deep Reach Technology, Inc., which provided services for the re-remerging deep-sea mining business.  In 2014 DRT entered into a Cooperative Research Agreement with the U. S. Army Research Laboratory Materiel Command  (“Investigation of Rare Earth Element Extraction from Deep Sea Sediment”, Prime Award W911NF-12-R-0011). This study led to the formation of Ocean Minerals, LLC to seek an exploration license in the Cook Islands, which was awarded in 2022.   DRT and Dr. Halkyard also served as the Competent Authority regarding the offshore technology for the Preliminary Economic Assessment and SEC SK-1300 report for the Metals Company in 2021.

Dr. Halkyard holds an ScD degree in Ocean Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a Life Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and Fellow of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers (SNAME). He is a Licensed Professional Mechanical Engineer in California.