Economic Geology Book

[Kahlil Algya]

Thestudy is primarily focused on metallic mineral deposits and mineral resources. The techniques employed by other Earth science disciplines (such as geochemistry, mineralogy, geophysics, petrology, paleontology and structural geology) might all be used to understand, describe and exploit an ore deposit.[citation needed]

Economic geology is studied and practiced by geologists. Economic geology may be of interest to other professions such as engineers, environmental scientists and conservationists because of the far-reaching impact that extractive industries have on society, the economy and the environment.

The purpose of the study of economic geology is to gain understanding of the genesis and localization of ore deposits plus the minerals associated with ore deposits.[2] Though metals, minerals and other geologic commodities are non-renewable in human time frames, the impression of a fixed or limited stock paradigm of scarcity has always led to human innovation resulting in a replacement commodity substituted for those commodities which become too expensive. Additionally the fixed stock of most mineral commodities is huge (e.g., copper within the Earth's crust given current rates of consumption would last for more than 100 million years.)[3] Nonetheless, economic geologists continue to successfully expand and define known mineral resources.[citation needed]

Mineral resources are concentrations of minerals significant for current and future societal needs. Ore is classified as mineralization economically and technically feasible for extraction. Not all mineralization meets these criteria for various reasons. The specific categories of mineralization in an economic sense are:

Geologists are involved in the study of ore deposits, which includes the study of ore genesis and the processes within the Earth's crust that form and concentrate ore minerals into economically viable quantities.[citation needed]

Study of metallic ore deposits involves the use of structural geology, geochemistry, the study of metamorphism and its processes, as well as understanding metasomatism and other processes related to ore genesis.[citation needed]

Ore deposits are delineated by mineral exploration, which uses geochemical prospecting, drilling and resource estimation via geostatistics to quantify economic ore bodies. The ultimate aim of this process is mining.[citation needed]

The mission of the Center for Economic Geology Research (CEGR) is to investigate solutions to the challenges in Wyoming's fossil fuel and mineral industries. CEGR research projects explore opportunities to use Wyoming's distinctive geology and resources in order to develop those opportunities, diversify Wyoming's economy, and to maintain competitiveness in a low-carbon fossil energy future.

The Center for Economic Geology Research continues to pursue a wide variety of projects and research endeavors. While core work is focused on carbon capture, utilization, & storage (CCUS), CEGR has expanded to include projects relating to carbon dioxide mitigation technology, and critical materials & rare earth elements.

Bernard L. Majewski started working for Deep Rock Oil Corporation of Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1917 and eventually became head of marketing and a vice-president. Deep Rock sold its bulk marketing facilities in the Chicago, Illinois, area to Majewski in 1951 and he started the Great American Oil Company. He also served on the National Recovery Administration's Petroleum Industry Planning and Coordination Committee from 1933-1935, the Petroleum Administration for War during World War II and was active with the National Petroleum Council and the American Petroleum Institute.

Thayer Lindsley, one of the 20th century's most prominent mine developers, was president of ten mining companies and on the boards of fifteen others. He was also a director of Canada's Crown Trust Company. His mining enterprises extended over five continents. In 1952 he became chairman of the board for Williston Oil and Gas Company. His collection includes mining reports, maps, legal agreements, and business correspondence referencing mines all over the world owned both by Lindsley and others.

In 1876, Moses and Fred Manual established the Homestake Mine near Bobtail Gulch in South Dakota. A year later George Hearst and others helped the Manuel Brothers to incorporate and the Homestake Mining Company was formed. The Homestake Mining Company records include information such as drill logs, assays, and maps about mine sites and mining activities in the Rocky Mountain Region including the states of Wyoming and South Dakota. The bulk of the information relates to uranium mining in Wyoming from 1952 to 1989.

M. King Hubbert is best-known for being the first scientist to articulate a model for depletion of energy resources, a theory that came to be known as "peak oil," or "Hubbert's curve. His collection contains correspondence; lectures and class notes on physics and geology; publications and reprints; extensive research notes and subject files; glass negatives; maps & charts; and miscellaneous artifacts.

The Wagon Wheel Information Committee formed in 1971 to halt the proposed use of underground nuclear blasting for natural gas exploration south of Pinedale, Wyoming. The collection contains material related to the committee's successful efforts to keep Project Wagon Wheel from occurring.

The Midwest Oil Company, incorporated in Arizona in 1911, played a major role in the development of Wyoming's Salt Creek oil field. In 1951 it merged with the Saltmount Company and Mountain Producers Corporation to form the Midwest Oil Corporation. Materials include minute books, articles of incorporation, balance sheets, financial statements, correspondence, income tax records, oil depletion and reserves reports, legal papers and court documents.

The Kemmerer Coal Company was founded in 1897 by Patrick J. Quealy (1857-1930), Mahlon S. Kemmerer (d. 1926) and his son, John L. Kemmerer with Quealy serving as president. Quealy and the Kemmerers also established the town of Kemmerer in Lincoln County, Wyoming in 1897. The collection contains correspondence and letterpress books, coal mining and labor relations, miscellaneous financial materials, and the development of the town of Kemmerer, Wyoming.

The Lowell Program in Economic Geology (or LPEG) spans education and research on applying all branches of geology to mineral resources. Applications range from policy to the mining life cycle (exploration, development, production, closure) to the basic study of ore bodies and the geologic systems that generate them.

The Lowell Program in Economic Geology was generously endowed by a gift from J. David Lowell to the University of Arizona in 2000. The original intent was to provide additional education and training for geologists who want to further their careers in the exploration and mining industry. It has come to include all the mineral resource-related education and research programs in the Department of Geosciences. Subsequent endowment of the Lundin Family Chair in Economic Geology in 2020 and support from the School of Mining and Mineral Resources since 2022 have helped grow the program.

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I went onto say in my post that the publication of economic geology papers with weak scientific arguments have been going on for decades (since the 1960s) and that many of the problematic papers are model-driven which I regard as pseudoscientific.

By pseudoscience, I mean interpretations that cannot be falsified because there is no practical way of testing them. Most of these papers leave out critical observations and focus their interpretations based around conceptual ideas created by previous workers, which themselves are not anchored on solid observations that are made in the field. They remain theoretical and they cannot make useful predictions that can be tested, or falsified. If an interpretation cannot be falsified, we are dealing not with science, but pseudoscience and I discussed the concept of falsification (Popper, 1959) in the introductory post to this series.

This article is all about this video that I just made reviewing the most recent open access VMS article that anyone can access (DeWolfe et al 2024), so that you can follow my arguments by going through the paper yourself. I also provide links to all of the papers mentioned in this discussion in the reference list, below. Let me know what you think of my analysis, and I welcome any constructive criticisms.

As my video analysis demonstrates, DeWolfe et al (2024) shows a clear preference for the VMS model and focused on the conjectural existence of "synvolcanic faults" that purportedly acted as hydrothermal fluid pathways. The paper builds on previous studies that also speculate about these elusive synvolcanic faults described from many ancient VMS papers, but I have not found a single study that provide a clear and convincing example of such a fault system. Faults, if they do exist, in papers that I've reviewed, make more sense as being formed during the late stages of the orogenic cycle and not before deformation.

I conclude that the only way I can get a response to my concerns outlined in this article is by writing to the Editor of Economic Geology as a discussion article of DeWolfe et al (2024). I normally don't do this, as there are so many flawed papers that are missing key observations that are published each year, and I would be spending all of my spare time writing discussion of articles! Leave your thoughts in the comments section whether I should follow this up formally through the journal.

For working geologists who are keen to learn the basic principles of structural geological analysis of mineral deposits using your own drilling data, I have a two-day workshop that your company might be interested in sponsoring. I focus on practical outcomes, and there are no speculative bandwagon concepts in my workshop, but only pure data analysis! The workshop is detailed in my last LinkedIn article. If this is of interest, please message me on LinkedIn or email me at j...@juncowan.com.

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