In my last article I talked about the transferable skills of a geoscientist: The skills of the exploration geologist are transferable to other industries. Whether mapping mineral deposits for petroleum prospects, delineating pollution for damage-cost assessments or using mapping software to measure geographic features of the Earth, the skills of exploration are transferable to a variety of industries.
Let’s dig deeper into this thought.
Economic Geology versus Entrepreneurial Geology
Economic analysis is familiar to many AAPG members. Fundamental skills among our membership are the mapping of subsurface pore volumes, performing decline curve comparisons leading to discounted cashflow models, and finally ending with a net present value of reserves in place. From a value perspective, in some ways an environmental geologist performs the same function. The end result of an economic analysis in the extractive industries, including mining, results in a positive value to be pursued for capital gains. The environmental industry presents the flip side, which is the assessment of negative value present as environmental damages, remediation costs and/or capital lost in remediation. The intersection of skills used in petroleum, mining, and environmental services is essential for understanding economic geology. However, it is not entrepreneurial geology.
An entrepreneur is willing to take risks to engage in potentially profitable business ventures. Expanding this definition a bit, an entrepreneurial geologist is one who finds new ways to respond to societal material, energy, or environmental needs through an expanded understanding of planetary systems and business practices. Our professional society meets this definition in some ways.
In a report from the Geological Society of America and the National Science Foundation, the authors’ survey reveals needs of a geologist not found in traditional academic settings, included:
- More business and management skills training
- Broader collaboration with successful entrepreneurs and innovators
- Greater access to venture capital opportunities, business incubators, and accelerators
- Balanced focus on energy production and sustainability
Some of these are needs our professional society can meet in a university setting through the Imperial Barrel Award competition and various student chapters, providing an opportunity to gain these skills through extracurricular activities that are not found within traditional geoscience education. The authors also found that universities encouraging geoscience faculty to publish – more than pursue patents or start companies – while training students to be skilled workers or pursue academic careers, leads to a selection bias. They write “without fostering an environment that supports geoinnovation and entrepreneurship, budding entrepreneurs will have difficulty finding a home within the geosciences.”
This concept is not new. In essence, the oil prospector is often self-taught was an entrepreneur.
Emerging Opportunities for Energy Mineral Entrepreneurs
Today, critical materials in the electrification of transportation and the shift to renewable energy presents a number of new opportunities for geologists who want to be entrepreneurs. For example, in mid-January, Reuters correspondent Ernest Scheyder, who is also the author of “The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives,” wrote in Reuters that U.S. lawmakers had introduced a bill to create $2.5 billion critical-minerals stockpile. If the bill passes into law it would create a Strategic Resilience Reserve with a seven- person board similar in structure to the Federal Reserve Board. The board will be responsible for purchasing and stockpiling materials critical to the economy and national defense. This arrangement would ostensibly secure domestic supply chains of critical minerals by preventing manipulation of markets.
Scheyder added that the board would need the technical expertise for long-term storage, which would include both mined and recycled materials.
Exploration and geologic prospecting might soon see a resurgence as this Strategic Resilience Reserve stockpiles materials.