Offshore drilling companies operate the rigs that turn a promising survey into a producing well. They are contractors paid by the day to drill in deep or shallow water, and their fortunes swing with the oil price and the exploration budgets of the big operators. Before any rig ever moves into position, though, a survey has to happen, and that is where the “$150 Trillion Birthright” presentation tries to draw a line to a different kind of company.
The presenter is Jim Rickards, a former general counsel at Long-Term Capital Management and a best-selling author on currency and geopolitics, who runs model Press’s Strategic Intelligence letter. His pitch claims President Trump “opened 650 million acres of federal land containing an estimated $150 trillion in buried minerals,” and that mining companies are “legally required to find the exact location of these mineral deposits BEFORE they can dig a single hole.” The three companies he names are survey and equipment firms, not drillers, and understanding the difference is the key to reading the pitch.
The Driller Versus the Surveyor
An offshore driller carries real operational risk. Day rates, utilization, contract backlogs, and the physical difficulty of deepwater work all feed the bottom line. When oil prices fall, rigs get stacked and day rates collapse. The surveyor sits one step earlier in the chain and carries a different kind of risk: it gets paid on activity, not on whether a well comes in.
That distinction is the strongest part of the pitch. A survey firm does not need a discovery to earn revenue; it needs customers willing to spend on the search. The problem is not the mechanism but the assumption that those customers are mining companies rather than oil and gas operators.
The Three Names and the Scoreboard
The presentation names three “MDP” picks, short for mineral discovery technology. They are Geospace Technologies, a maker of land and marine seismic equipment with about $116 million in trailing revenue; TGS ASA, the Norwegian energy-data firm formed from the 2023 TGS and PGS merger; and MIND Technology, a maker of offshore seismic hardware under the Seamap brand with about $46 million in annual revenue.
Since the tease, Geospace is down 73.8% and MIND is down 56.8%, while TGS is up 8.9%. That is one single-digit gain and two large losses, set against promised returns of “1,520% gain potential” to “4,800% gain potential.” The June 24, 2025 catalyst the original ad pointed to came and went without a surge. We covered the seafloor and survey side of this in our deep-sea mining explainer and our critical minerals strategy explainer.
The Category Reality
The honest read is that these are oil and gas seismic companies, not drillers and not miners. Their revenue has tracked energy exploration budgets for decades. TGS ASA and MIND Technology both had their moment during the 2010 to 2012 oil bull market and gave most of it back as the cycle turned. The ad also claims one pick has institutional ownership of “only 8%,” implying early entry, but our teardown found the real figure near 67%. We put the discovery angle in context in our AI mineral exploration coverage and our rare earth stocks coverage.
The Rigs, the Day Rates, and the Survey Step
Offshore drillers earn day rates, the fee an operator pays for a rig to work, and those rates swing with utilization across the global fleet. When oil prices are high and operators book long campaigns, day rates rise and rigs stay busy; when prices fall, rigs get stacked and day rates collapse. The survey step sits immediately before all of that, because an operator rarely commits a rig to a location it has not first imaged. That ordering is the honest kernel of the Birthright pitch: more drilling means more surveying, and the surveyor gets paid on activity rather than on whether a well comes in. What the pitch does not show is the customer identity. The survey and equipment companies it names are paid overwhelmingly by oil and gas operators, not by miners, so their revenue follows the oil exploration budget rather than a mining mandate. Understanding that chain, rig, survey, drill, is the cleanest way to see where the pitch maps to reality and where it drifts. If offshore drilling turns up, the survey layer should turn up first, which is the part of the story worth watching.
A Fair Frame
None of this means the companies are bad businesses. Geospace, TGS ASA, and MIND Technology are real, established survey and equipment franchises, and a genuine upswing in offshore energy exploration would help all three, alongside the drillers themselves. The offer behind the pitch is The Situation Report at $1,995 per year with no refunds, and the headline numbers are promotional forecasts, not guarantees. If the energy-services cycle turns up, these are interesting but speculative ways to play it.
Ready to see the research? Click here to view the American Birthright presentation.
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