TGS ASA (TGSGY) is the Norwegian energy-data company that sits at the center of one of the three picks in Jim Rickards’s “$150 Trillion Birthright” presentation. It is not a miner and not a driller. It is the owner of one of the largest libraries of offshore seismic data in the world, and it makes its money by licensing that data to oil and gas companies. Understanding what TGS ASA actually does is the fastest way to judge whether the pitch’s claims about it hold up.

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, presents TGS ASA as “The Wildcat,” the pick that “controls deep sea detection” with “1,520% gain potential.” The pitch folds it into a broader claim that President Trump “opened 650 million acres of federal land containing an estimated $150 trillion in buried minerals.” Here is what that framing gets right and what it misses.

What TGS ASA Actually Does

TGS ASA traces its current form to the 2023 merger of TGS and PGS, the two leading offshore seismic companies. The combined firm gathers enormous volumes of seismic data, the acoustic images of the rock beneath the seafloor, and licenses that data to energy companies rather than drilling itself. This is a data and licensing business, not an exploration business.

The economics matter. A survey is expensive to shoot up front, but once the data exists, the marginal cost of selling another license is low. The library becomes a recurring asset that can be sold to multiple customers over years. That is why TGS ASA is often described as a purer play on the data side of the seismic industry than its equipment-making peers.

The “Deep Sea Minerals Pathfinder”

The Birthright pitch leans on a side project TGS ASA calls the “Deep Sea Minerals Pathfinder.” The idea is straightforward: the same acoustic techniques used to map oil and gas below the seafloor can be repurposed to locate and map nodule fields for seabed mining. That is a genuine overlap, and it is the most direct link between TGS ASA and the mineral-discovery theme in the whole presentation.

It is also, for now, a small part of the business. Offshore seismic for oil and gas customers remains the company’s core revenue driver. Our deep-sea mining explainer covers the nodule harvest and its timeline in more detail.

How It Fits the Pitch

The presentation names three “MDP” companies, mineral-discovery-technology plays. Alongside TGS ASA, “The Pioneer” is Geospace Technologies, a Houston-area maker of land and marine seismic equipment, and “The Innovator” is MIND Technology, which builds offshore seismic hardware under the Seamap brand. All three are oil and gas seismic companies whose revenue tracks energy exploration budgets and the oil price, not mineral discovery.

That category point is the key to the pitch. Our teardown of the presentation found that the mineral framing overstates how much of these companies’ revenue is tied to mining.

The Scoreboard Since the Tease

Of the three picks, TGS ASA is the one that has held up. The pitch promised “1,520% gain potential.” Since the tease, TGS ASA is up 8.9%, while Geospace Technologies is down 73.8% and MIND Technology down 56.8%. A single-digit gain is a real gain, but it is a long way from the four-digit promise, and the June 24, 2025 catalyst tied to unlocking Phase II came and went with no surge.

For the broader critical minerals and rare earth context, our critical minerals strategy explainer and our rare earth stocks coverage separate the genuine policy push from the promotional packaging.

The offer behind the pitch is the Situation Report at $1,995 per year with no refunds. TGS ASA is a legitimate, established seismic data leader with a real, if still small, deep-sea angle, and the case for it should rest on rising offshore exploration spending rather than a promotional deadline.

The 2023 merger of TGS and PGS was itself a consolidation move in an industry that had been shrinking for years. Combining the two leading offshore seismic firms removed a major competitor and left the combined company with a larger, more valuable data library and a bigger share of the multi-client survey market. That scale is a genuine advantage. It also means TGS ASA’s revenue is even more concentrated in offshore oil and gas than a smaller, more diversified surveyor would be. The deep-sea minerals angle is real, but it sits on top of a business whose fortunes still follow the offshore energy cycle.

TGS ASA also carries a cleaner profile than many peers after the merger, with the data library itself serving as a store of value that can be licensed even in a down market. That does not make the stock immune to the energy cycle, but it does give the company something to sell when drilling activity slows, which is more than a pure equipment maker can say.

Ready to see the research? Click here to view the American Birthright presentation.

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