With so many blogs out there one wonders why another one, especially on mining. The thing is that recent times one only hears about mining when either a tailings dam fails, such as the one in Brazil, or when some other bad news make gold mining stocks soar – think of Brexit. So whenever one hears of mining, the public does not seem to think very favorable of it. However, having a café latte at a coffee shop in a big city makes one easily forget that mining is one of the main foundations of our society. Be it the steel and concrete in a high rise, the aluminum and plastic in a car, the rocks and asphalt in the very pavement one walks on, the drinking water that is piped in steel and copper pipes, the electricity that comes in copper cables from far away generating units, or the clothes one wears that can only be made with machines that contain lots of metals – all of it has its origin in mining. The problem of mining is that its essential relationship is very much obscured in our daily lives.

This blog tries to resurface this relationship. It wants to show how far our modern society needs to go to allow for our sophisticated lives – and travelling to far distant places will be essential for this. Hence as the name Mining Quest suggests, it describes a significance-laden journey into the unknown with many obstacles ahead in search for the significance of mining. No matter how the journey evolves, I am sure I will see plenty of great places and will have stories to tell. So stay tuned and join me for the ride….

About Me

Alcoa Aluminum Smelter in Iceland

I am a mineral economist with a geology background and worked for many years helping mining companies to succeed in their business. I was an exploration geologist at a gold company, a mining analyst and consultant at major consultancy, a senior manager at a small mining service company in charge of their mining division, and on the wild side, an entrepreneur that tried to improve the functionality of mobile phones. All this work has brought me to many distant places. In fact, just the other day I realized that I have paid income taxes in 5 countries on 3 continents and worked in many more places. Wherever I went I never lost my interest for road trips, local food, experiencing nature, mining, photography and history – the world is full of it.