Most people think of oil and gas exploration in terms of rigs and pipelines, but the industry’s most valuable asset is often invisible: seismic data. A single offshore survey can map thousands of square kilometers of the seafloor and the rock beneath it, producing a library of images that energy companies will pay to license for years. That data, not the drilling, is the real product for a handful of firms, and it sits at the center of Jim Rickards’s “$150 Trillion Birthright” presentation.
Rickards, a former general counsel at Long-Term Capital Management, best-selling author on currency and geopolitics, and editor of model Press’s Strategic Intelligence letter, argues that President Trump “opened 650 million acres of federal land containing an estimated $150 trillion in buried minerals.” His pitch then names three “MDP” companies, mineral-discovery-technology plays, that he says could dominate the search. Understanding seismic data is the key to evaluating whether that claim holds up.
How Seismic Data Is Made
Seismic crews generate sound energy, from vibrating trucks on land or air guns at sea, and record the reflections that return from rock layers below. Computers process those reflections into images of the subsurface. The result is a data set that shows where the formations are, how thick they are, and whether they might trap oil, gas, or other resources.
The economics are what matter. A survey firm pays to shoot and process the data up front, then licenses it to multiple customers over time. Once the survey is done, the marginal cost of selling one more license is low, so the data library becomes a recurring asset. This is a fundamentally different business from drilling, which spends money on every well and only earns when a well hits.
The Licensing Model
The leader in this model is TGS ASA, the Norwegian energy-data company formed from the 2023 merger of TGS and PGS. It owns one of the largest libraries of offshore seismic data in the world and licenses it to oil and gas customers rather than drilling itself. This is “The Wildcat” in the Birthright pitch, and it is the clearest pure play on seismic data of the three picks.
The other two picks are more hardware-oriented. “The Pioneer” is Geospace Technologies, a Houston-area maker of land and marine seismic equipment with about $116 million in trailing revenue. “The Innovator” is MIND Technology, which builds offshore seismic hardware under the Seamap brand, including the SeaLink streamer. All three earn from the same exploration cycle, but TGS ASA is the one whose business is literally the data.
Where the Pitch Overstates
The presentation frames these companies as mineral-discovery plays and claims “the market for their services could explode from $2 billion to $100 billion over the next 12 months.” Our teardown of the presentation found the mining link is thin. These are oil and gas seismic businesses, and their revenue has tracked energy exploration budgets and the oil price for decades. Mineral discovery is a small part of what they do.
The scoreboard supports the caution. The pitch promised “4,800% gain potential” for Geospace Technologies, “1,520% gain potential” for TGS ASA, and “4,340% gain potential” for MIND Technology. Since the June 24, 2025 catalyst came and went, Geospace Technologies is down 73.8% and MIND Technology down 56.8%, while TGS ASA is up 8.9%.
Why the Data Business Still Matters
Seismic data is a durable, real business. When energy companies raise exploration budgets, the data firms benefit early, and their libraries keep earning between cycles. For the adjacent themes, our deep-sea mining explainer covers how the same acoustic techniques are used offshore, and our AI mineral exploration coverage looks at how technology is changing discovery.
The Birthright pitch is a marketing presentation for the Situation Report, priced at $1,995 per year with no refunds. The seismic data business is real and worth understanding, but the companies behind this pitch are energy plays first, and the timing deserves a careful look.
A data library is also a pricing-power business in disguise. Because a survey is a sunk cost, the firm that owns it can license the same data to many customers, with each additional sale falling mostly to the bottom line. The catch is that the value of the library depends on where energy companies want to explore next. When budgets shift to new basins, old data loses value and new surveys have to be shot. That is why the data firms are so tightly coupled to the oil price and to exploration spending, and why treating them as a mineral-discovery play misses the engine that actually drives their revenue.
Data quality also matters more than volume. A library full of old, low-resolution surveys is worth far less than a smaller library of modern, high-resolution data that matches where operators want to drill today. That is why the leading data firms keep reinvesting in new surveys even when prices are soft, and why a data company’s value sits closer to a content library than to a one-off sale.
Ready to see the research? Click here to view the American Birthright presentation.
NewsletterVetter is an independent publication. We receive compensation from some of the services we review through affiliate links. Nothing on this site is investment advice. Always do your own research.