Aramco, an integrated energy and chemicals company, and Maaden, a mining company, announced the signing of a shareholders’ agreement to establish a Joint Venture (JV) aimed at unlocking new opportunities in mineral exploration and hard-rock mining in Saudi Arabia. The JV will focus on copper and other minerals that are crucial to the energy transition.
The JV is expected to be jointly owned by Maaden and Aramco, with Maaden holding 51% of the shares and Aramco holding 49%. The JV will concentrate its exploration efforts in Zone-4, also known as the Transition Zone, within the Arabian Platform.
This venture presents a significant opportunity for mineral discovery in Saudi Arabia. The expected exploration area spans 182,000sqkm, which is nearly 10% of the total land area of the Kingdom. The exploration zone stretches along a 100km wide area that runs parallel to the Arabian Shield.
Saleh M Al Saleh, Aramco, Vice President of Transition Minerals, said, “Over 90 years, Aramco has accumulated and analyzed the largest amount of geological and geophysical data ever acquired in a single basin for the Kingdom.”
“This partnership intends to leverage this legacy information to find minerals in the JV area within the basin. Maaden’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.”
Darryl Clark, Maaden Executive Vice President for Exploration, said, “Maaden has been advancing one of the world’s largest single jurisdiction exploration programs across the Arabian Shield to help unlock the Kingdom’s mineral potential. This joint venture would take that ambition into a new area.”
“By combining Maaden’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.”
Copper, which is increasingly significant for electric vehicles, power networks, energy storage, and renewable energy systems, would be a main focus of the JV. Copper is a major metal making up over 20% of the US $1.2tn mined metals market.
The copper market is currently valued at $250bn and is projected to grow to over $400bn by 2035. The JV would also explore for other energy transition minerals including zinc, lead, and rare earth elements that are expected to be crucial to industries of the future.
Leveraging advanced computational algorithms, AI, and high-performance computing, the JV intends to target areas most likely to contain copper and valuable minerals, accelerating the path from regional screening to target definition and discovery.
This is expected to support long-term sector development, reinforce the Kingdom’s role in the global minerals value chain, and help meet rising demand for transition minerals.
