TGS stock, the American depositary receipt for TGS ASA (TGSGY) that trades over the counter, is one of the three names Jim Rickards teases in his “$150 Trillion Birthright” presentation, also called American Birthright Phase II. 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, casts the company as “The Wildcat,” the pick that “controls deep sea detection” with “1,520% gain potential.” Here is what that actually means.

The presentation argues that President Trump “opened 650 million acres of federal land containing an estimated $150 trillion in buried minerals” and that mining companies will be “legally required to find the exact location of these mineral deposits BEFORE they can dig a single hole.” The pitch says three small “MDP” companies, mineral-discovery-technology plays, could dominate the discovery work. TGS is the most data-centric of the three, and understanding its business is the key to judging the claim.

What TGS Actually Does

TGS is a Norwegian energy-data company formed from the 2023 merger of TGS and PGS, the two leading offshore seismic firms. It collects massive seismic data sets, the acoustic images of the rock beneath the seafloor, and licenses them to oil and gas customers. It does not drill, and it does not produce. It sells the map, not the mine or the well.

That model has real advantages. Once a survey is shot and processed, the data can be licensed again and again, making the library a recurring asset with low marginal costs. It also means TGS does not take dry-hole risk. Its fortunes rise and fall with exploration budgets rather than with any single well.

The Deep Sea Angle

The Birthright pitch leans on a side project TGS calls the “Deep Sea Minerals Pathfinder.” The concept is that the same acoustic techniques used to map oil and gas can be used to locate and map polymetallic nodule fields on the ocean floor for seabed mining. That is a genuine technical overlap, and it is the reason TGS is the one pick with a direct tie to the deep-sea theme.

It is also, for now, a small part of the business. Offshore seismic for oil and gas customers remains the core, and our deep-sea mining explainer covers the nodule harvest and its timeline for anyone wanting the fuller picture.

How It Fits the Bigger Pitch

The presentation groups TGS with “The Pioneer,” Geospace Technologies, a maker of land and marine seismic equipment, and “The Innovator,” MIND Technology, which builds offshore seismic hardware under the Seamap brand. All three are oil and gas seismic companies whose revenue has tracked energy exploration budgets and the oil price for decades, not mineral discovery.

Our teardown of the presentation found that the mineral framing overstates how much of these companies’ revenue is tied to mining, and that the claim about a twelve-month market “explosion” does not match how federal leasing actually grows.

The Scoreboard Since the Tease

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

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 is a legitimate, established offshore seismic data leader with a genuine, if early, deep-sea angle, and the case for the stock should rest on rising offshore exploration spending rather than a promotional deadline.

The “Wildcat” nickname fits the story better than the business. A wildcat is an exploration well drilled in unproven territory, a high-risk bet on the unknown. TGS is closer to the opposite: a data company that sells mapping to explorers and earns whether they strike or not. The deep-sea minerals project is the wildcat part, a genuinely speculative side bet on the nodule harvest. That distinction helps explain why TGS has been the steadiest of the three picks, and why its deep-sea upside, while real, is not the same thing as its core business.

The steadier performance of TGS stock since the tease also reflects what the company actually is. It is the largest of the three, it owns a data library with real recurring-license economics, and it has not had to lean on a single contract the way a smaller equipment maker does. That profile explains why it has held up while the other two fell, and it is the more useful way to think about the stock than the “Wildcat” label suggests.

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

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