Bill Stavast

Innovation and AI in Mining Geology

Steady... steady... You can feel your heart beating. All is silent in anticipation. Steady... and... BOOOOOM!!!! Four hundred explosions go off in near synchronization. The shockwave ripples through the ground, closing the half-mile distance with ease. Now THIS is podracing geology.

Dr. Bill Stavast gave a seminar on October 9th on innovations in mining geology. He received both his bachelor's and master's degrees in geology from BYU and later received his PhD from the University of Arizona. He boasts years of experience in mining (and explosions) in his role as senior geologist at Freeport-McMoran, a global mining operation that owns the largest mine in North America, near Morenci, Arizona. The company is well-renowned for their ethical and environmentally friendly practices, in part thanks to Stavast's contributions, who determines where they should dig and how to safely dispose of mining waste. In his words, "Geology has changed a lot in the last twenty years I've been in the industry. Most of that has been in the last four years."

In Arizona, Freeport-McMoran hires geologists and geometallurgists to locate dig sites for extracting copper. Once the site has been properly evaluated, they use core drilling and explosives to collect rock samples before evaluating them to determine what kind of ore is present. The samples are gathered in massive trucks and hauled away for further evaluation. A single truck employed by mining companies can carry up to a staggering 270 tons of rock, and they don't have time to sit around waiting. That means geologists need to know exactly what kinds of ores are in the truck and the best way to process them—whether to use acid, how much to grind them up, etc. If plan A isn't available right then, they need to have a plan B and plan C ready to go so as to not stall operations.

In order to begin the process of mining, 3D modeling is necessary to evaluate a dig site, but it requires extensive data. Cross sections must be created from hundreds or even thousands of feet of core samples taken from a massive cubic area. The samples are examined, catalogued, and modeled onto the computer. In the past, it could take a team of geologists two years of hand-analyzing core samples to create a singular three-dimensional model. Those days are long gone. Now, they use lasers to scan cores and determine their makeup and lengths, making measurements much faster and more accurate. Artificial intelligence takes data and sorts it, relieving a painstakingly slow process for geologists. In the next couple of years, AI is even expected to be able to model textures, grain size, and the specific location of minerals. While Stavast occasionally plays Minecraft with his kids, he gets to live it every day. Using about 600 cross-sections from drilling, he creates 3D block models estimating where the copper is and in what quantities. It's in the creation of these models that AI advancements are especially useful. What once took weeks now takes hours, and what once took hours now takes minutes.

So what does this mean for the geologists' jobs? Stavast says that everyone is glad they are automating. Taking measurements of the cores is tedious and demanding, and no one enjoyed that facet of the job. With the arrival of AI and the enhancement of data processing and modeling, geologists are needed now more than ever. Software knows data, not geology. Only geologists can take the vast amount of data and contextualize it. For geologists at Freeport-McMoran, AI isn't a threat; rather, it's a tool that enhances their jobs and gives them more to work with. Currently, Freeport-McMoran stands as the most innovative mining company in the world, utilizing AI in a far greater capacity across the board than any other in the industry.

Stavast encourages upcoming geologists to familiarize themselves with technology to prepare themselves for the workforce. Freeport-McMoran takes summer interns and prefers applicants with knowledge of Python and AI. The better you can utilize these tools, the better you can keep up with and even further the innovation in geology.