Norway has shelved plans to open a vast ocean area at the bottom of the Arctic for commercial-scale deep-sea mining.

Norway has paused its controversial project to open up its seabed for commercial-scale deep-sea mining. Oslo had planned to let companies apply to mine 280,000 sq km (108,000 sq miles) of its waters for precious metals - an area bigger than the size of the UK.

Norway, Western Europe's biggest oil and gas producer, had planned to become one of the world's first countries to start handing out rights to tens of thousands of square kilometers of seabed.