By Paul Gorman
Volatility is giving companies with an interest in the subsurface a bumpy ride but, despite its disruptions, 2026 holds exhilarating prospects.
That’s the view of Seequent Chief Executive Graham Grant, speaking during Unlocking Subsurface Value: A virtual deep dive in partnership with Reuters.
‘Doesn’t it feel like we’ve exited ‘25 like a catapult? ’26 feels to me like I could be in the most disrupted and volatile year, but the most exciting year I’ve ever seen in my career,’ Grant said.
Watch the webinar to hear insights from our expert panel.
The sudden dip of gold and silver prices at the end of January to levels where they were still almost double those of a year ago was a reflection of global uncertainty and geopolitical fragmentation, he said.
There was trade conflict over critical minerals and tariffs, which had triggered capital flow change around the world on a huge scale, and massive investment into infrastructure, such as in Germany. At the same time, data centres were struggling to secure enough electricity and AI was fast changing the game.
‘Each one of these is routed at some point, or connected to, the underground, and I think for the last 20 years companies related to the underground have been focusing on efficiency. And now they’re scrambling for resiliency, they’re scrambling for agility, and it’s a whole new game.’
2026 was likely to be the year when subsurface intelligence stopped being a technical function and became a boardroom issue, Grant said.
‘It’s strategic. Those that get it – they will shape the next decade, and they will win.’
The webinar, which followed a white paper published by Seequent and Reuters called Geoscience: the race to understand the subsurface, discussed whether volatility was forcing organisations to rethink what ‘acceptable risk’ means.
Seequent Segment Director, Energy, Jeremy O’Brien, said during the webinar organisations were still trying to stay the course rather than make knee-jerk reactions.
‘There will be periods of time an assessment will take to get to a decision – a decision to drill or a decision on a final investment in a project – and I think we are seeing that be compressed and be challenged, at a time in a lot of industries where the teams aren’t as big as they have been in the past.’
Ormat Technologies’ Vice-President of Exploration and Resource Management, Simon Webbison, said the industry was trying to provide new electricity for customers as quickly as possible but there were many constraints.
Permitting had traditionally been one of those.
‘In the US, we’ve seen with some of the legislation in the last year that federal timelines have moved from the years into the months or sub-months. That puts a lot more pressure on us to make decisions quickly and be able to respond to opportunities as they arise.
‘When we’ve been used to a certain timeframe that we get comfortable with, that’s where the risk comes in because you’re now working at a different pace and you’re needing to do things differently but still have the right level of safeguards in your process to have good outcomes.’
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Grant said people could confuse volatility with uncertainty. The current rate of volatility could cause the industry to lose focus and put pressure on to react quickly.
He believed structural uncertainty was now the main issue and a careful approach to it was needed.
‘What the smart people are doing is they are not trying to eliminate that uncertainty, which was our historical mindset. They’re building frameworks to embrace and absorb the uncertainty, which means things like scenario planning.
‘So, in the subsurface space, that we are all focused on, are you thinking about how to scenario plan in the subsurface as opposed to just do deterministic thinking?
‘We do war gaming around extreme vectors of possible scenarios, and then we try and imagine “what would happen if?”. And then we build resiliency into the firm – “if those things were to play out” – because, frankly, we can’t predict them, but we can be ready.’
Governments were recalibrating the value of critical metals, he said.
‘In some countries they are now a strategic asset for national security. That must change the equation about how they think about data acquisition and particularly data release. So, is it now just a public asset open for all or will they start to have more retention policy, perhaps?’
Global Venture Consulting Chief Executive Emily King said making as much data publicly available as possible was in the best interests of a responsible and reliable mining industry.
‘The more data that’s out there in an accessible fashion, not just transparent, the better the companies you are going to get to come in and develop the projects you want to prioritise.’
When countries or companies tried to keep data close and controlled, they weren’t competing with others for that investment money and attention, she said.
‘You end up getting lesser quality companies showing up for that opportunity. It’s a bit counter-intuitive. You actually get more control over who is operating in your space by making the data free and open and accessible.
‘And that’s what you want the control over. Who’s playing around in your backyard?’
Grant said the industry needed to be ‘very concerned’ about the number of geoscientists nearing retirement.
‘If the data is true … years of subsurface knowledge will walk out the door. But more it’s pattern recognition. Geoscientists are so unique – they have this interpretive capacity to look at things and make sense of things.
‘I don’t think we can train our way out of this. Roles are falling. The solution is radical new levels of collaboration. We need to share information, share models, have open standards, share workflows out and across organisational boundaries, and have technology as a fourth multiplier, rather than something we should be concerned about.
‘That’s how we scale the expertise that we have. If we can figure that out, then we can put ourselves in a better position than we are in.’