Ma’aden (1211.SR) and Aramco (2222.SR) have announced the intention to form a joint venture (JV) to focus on new opportunities in mineral exploration and hard-rock mining in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The two companies have signed a shareholders’ agreement which will see the majors combine their strengths across copper and other critical minerals.
The JV is expected to be split with 51% ownership by Ma’aden and 49% by Aramco, with a focus on exploration across Zone-4, the Transition Zone, within the Arabian Platform. The exploration area spans around 182,000km2, nearly 10% of Saudi Arabia’s total land area.
Ma’aden Executive Vice President for Exploration Darryl Clark says that the company is focused on unlocking the Kingdom’s mineral potential through targeted exploration.
“This joint venture would take that ambition into a new area,” Clark says.
“By combining Ma’aden’s exploration and development expertise with Aramco’s extraordinary knowledge of the Arabian Platform, we would have an opportunity to move faster, explore smarter, and create new opportunities to discover the minerals that will power the energy transition.”
Aramco Vice President of Transition Minerals Saleh M Al Saleh also highlights the company’s expertise in the region, having accumulated the largest amount of geological and geophysical data ever acquired for a single basin in the Kingdom.
“This partnership intends to leverage this legacy information to find minerals in the JV area within the basin. Ma’aden’s expertise, our people, high-performance computing, and AI are expected to play a pivotal role in accelerating the discovery of key transition minerals at low cost,” Al Saleh says.
JV to accelerate transition minerals discovery
Copper will be the main focus for the JV. As a key material in the energy transition, Aramco notes that copper makes up over 20% of the US$1.2 trillion ($1.8 trillion) mined metals market.
Ma’aden already holds a Saudi Arabian copper-focused JV with Barrick Mining (NYSE:B) at the Jabal Sayid copper operation, located 350km northeast of Jeddah. The operation shipped its first copper concentrate in December 2015, with commercial production beginning in July 2016.
In 2023, Barrick signed JV agreements with Ma’aden for two prospective exploration projects, Jabal Sayid South and Umm Ad Damar, expanding Barrick’s exploration footprint in Saudi Arabia and growing the partnership between the two majors.
At the time, the company noted a commitment to realising the Saudi Arabian Government’s vision of growing a diversified and sustainable mining industry in the country.
This move aligns with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, which recognises mining as a key pillar of the Kingdom’s national economy. The strategy is focused on developing and diversifying a sustainable mining industry and mineral value chains by leveraging its vast resources, local demand, and access to global markets.
Write to Amy Rotman at Mining.com.au
Images: Aramco
