Hajra Naz
According to Kingdom Mining Minister Bandar Alkhorayef, the Saudi Improvement Fund (SDF) seemed to contribute more than $100 million to Pakistan’s mining foundation on Wednesday.
In an interview conducted on the fringes of the Future Minerals Forum in Riyadh, Alkhorayef stated, “We are considering ways to assist Pakistan in infrastructure as well.”
“Without that infrastructure, the economics of the deal are not attractive, so through the Saudi Development Fund we are thinking about how we can finance it.”
The announcement followed Petroleum Minister Musadik Malik’s announcement that Manara Minerals, a Saudi mining corporation, could invest in the Reko Diq mine within the next two quarters.
On the fringes of the Future Minerals Forum in Riyadh, Malik stated, “I’m very hopeful that in the next quarter or two we will have very big announcements,” adding that they will have to do with copper.
“So we’re very hopeful that this year, we will make some big announcements, both in the way of Reko Diq, but hopefully also” in the mining areas surrounding it, he stated.
When questioned about Manara’s involvement, Malik responded, “why not, of course.”
The kingdom’s efforts to diversify its economy away from oil included purchasing minority holdings in enterprises abroad through the establishment of Manara, a joint venture between the $925 billion Public Investment Fund (PIF) and state-controlled Ma’aden.
In May of last year, Manara executives traveled to Pakistan to discuss purchasing a share in the Reko Diq mine, which is jointly owned by the international mining corporation Barrick Gold and is regarded by the firm as one of the world’s greatest unexplored copper-gold zones.
Lithium project promising
The Saudi minister also told Reuters that oil firm Aramco’s 2222.SE project to extract lithium is “promising, but not yet commercially viable”.
According to Bandar Alkhorayef, Aramco has teamed up with King Abdullah University for Science and Technology (KAUST) on the pilot.
The extraction project is being led by Lithium Infinity, commonly known as Lihytech, a business that was founded out of KAUST with assistance from Aramco and the Saudi mining firm Ma’aden 1211.SE.
A vital part of the batteries in smartphones, computers, and electric cars is lithium. The national oil firms of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had already announced plans to extract the mineral from oil runoffs, according to a Reuters story.
A non-binding term sheet to investigate the establishment of a mining and minerals exploration joint venture in the kingdom was signed by Aramco and Ma’aden on Wednesday.
According to the two businesses, the venture “would focus on energy transition minerals, including advancing cost-effective direct lithium extraction (DLE) technologies and extracting lithium from high concentration deposits ” at the Future Minerals Forum in Riyadh.
Commercial production of lithium could likely occur by 2027.
