Saudi Arabia looks to Australia for support of its $170 billion mining plan

November 1, 2022

Saudi Arabia Minister of Industry and Mineral Resources Bandar bin Ibrahim Al-Khorayef visited Australia looking for support from mining companies as his country looks to diversify from its oil-dependent economy with more mining.

The kingdom says it is home to $1.3 trillion worth of untapped mineral deposits including copper, zinc, phosphates and gold and has created a Vision 2030 project to tap into those resources.

Australian miners should “come, explore, do mining -- the same as they are doing here,” Al-Khorayef told Bloomberg.

The Vision 2030 project aims to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and embrace industries from mining to renewable energy and manufacturing. Of the $170 billion sought for mining, it envisages about 60 percent will come from private companies and the rest from state-owned entities.

Al-Khorayef said he had met with a number of smaller Austrlalian miners already, and hoped to meet bigger players such BHP Group Ltd and Rio Tinto Plc at a major mining conference in Sydney.

Saudi investors are “interested in this sector,” he said, but the country lacks domestic mining expertise and “you need to have partners who understand the sector quite well, and know how to utilize the resources.”

Saudi Arabia’s small mining industry is dominated by state miner Saudi Arabian Mining Co., commonly known as Maaden. The country should emulate Australia’s model of junior, private-sector miners that develop riskier and early-stage mines, the minister said.

“We feel it’s quite a good model for us to copy in Saudi, because we have a lot of young entrepreneurs who I’m sure many of them would be interested in the sector,” he said.

Battery metals such as lithium and nickel are already a focus for Maaden and Saudi Arabia, but the scale of resources is still unclear. Maaden said last year it would spend a “huge amount of money” in the coming two decades to explore for battery metals.

Photo: Desert of Mastura city Saudi Arabia

 

 

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