In Episode 6 of Crude Awakenings, we trade black gold for the real thing. Our guest is Lewis Teal, a Certified Professional Geologist with 40 years in the mining industry, 27 of them at Newmont, where he helped lead exploration on Nevada's legendary Carlin Trend and ran operations from Peru to Suriname to French Guiana. He's also the first boss one of your hosts ever had coming out of grad school — so this one's personal.
We get into the surprising parallels between mining and oil & gas, why permitting time (not geology) is the industry's biggest enemy, how China cornered the critical-minerals market, the loss of the old Bureau of Mines, and where gold goes from here.
