Pietro Guj

Dr. Guj holds a dual appointment as Research Professor in the “Progressive Risk and Value Analysis” research theme at the Centre for Exploration Targeting (CET) of the University of Western Australia and as Adjunct Professor in Mineral Economics at the Graduate School of Business and at the Western Australian School of Mines of Curtin University, where he has lectured for the last 10 years. These academic roles followed a distinguished career in both the mining industry and Government. He has held the roles of Deputy Director General of the Department of Minerals and Energy and Director of the Geological Survey of Western Australia with responsibility for their general governance and strategic direction in setting and achieving their support and regulatory objectives with regard to the mineral and petroleum industry in Western Australia. Prior to this, as a Financial Executive for the Water Authority of Western Australia, he was responsible for financial plans, policy and strategies for recurrent income, expenditure and capital investments amounting to some $650 million per annum and for the pricing and tariff policy reform leading to corporatisation of this authority. These government roles were preceded by over 20 years in the field of geology, exploration and mining in Afghanistan, Pakistan, South Africa, Namibia and finally in Western Australia mostly for MIM Holdings. This period provided rich, hand-on experience in the generation, evaluation and technical supervision of exploration and development projects, often under prohibitive logistic conditions, for gold, base metals, nickel, iron ore and selected energy and non-metallic minerals and in the negotiation, legal structuring and management of joint ventures.

Dr Guj has a Degree of Dottore in Geologia from the University of Rome, a PhD in Geology from the University of Capetown and a MBA from the University of Western Australia. His main interests are in project modelling and financial evaluation, risk and decision analysis, with particular emphasis on real option valuation (ROV), as applied to the mineral and petroleum industries. He also has specialist expertise in mineral policy and in the formulation and administration of internationally competitive regulatory and fiscal regimes for exploration and mining; fields in which he has lectured and consulted widely internationally. Recent work in this field includes modelling of the impact of the proposed Mineral Resource Rent Tax (MRRT) on iron ore mines and of the Mining Rehabilitation Fund (MRF) in Western Australia, participation in a comparative review of international royalty regimes and direction of a major consultancy to improve the mineral revenue collection frameworks and processes in West Africa for the World Bank.