Saudi mining company Ma’aden reveals ‘promising’ gold and copper discoveries

New finds came from Wadi Al Jaww and Shayban in the Arabian Shield region

A miner works in the Al Amar gold mine in Riyadh. Saudi Arabia has more than 5,300 mining sites, valued at about $1.3 trillion. Reuters

Saudi Arabian Mining Company (Ma'aden) said on Wednesday that it has discovered “promising” deposits of gold and copper in the kingdom.

Ma'aden, the biggest mining company in the Arab world, discovered gold and copper intercepts at Wadi Al Jaww and Shayban in the Arabian Shield region, it said. Multiple intercepts of recoverable gold and copper grades were found in the exploration areas of the Shayban EL at Blocks 6 and 7.

The results indicate “wide intersections of gold mineralisation at Wadi Al Jaww, and gold and copper mineralisation at Jabal Shayban”, it said. New drilling results from Ma’aden’s flagship Mansourah-Massarah mine also showed strong gold mineralisation.

“We’ve been making significant investments in exploration in recent years, with the launch of the world’s largest single-jurisdiction mineral exploration programmes,” Bob Wilt, chief executive of Ma’aden, said. “Through the work we have undertaken in recent years, the raw prospectivity of the kingdom has been proven.”

Mining is a key component of Saudi Arabia’s drive to attract foreign direct investment, as laid out in the Vision 2030 plan, which aims to reduce the country's dependence on hydrocarbon revenue. The kingdom, Opec’s top oil exporter, aims to more than triple the mining sector’s contribution to its economic output by 2030.

Ma'aden, which is majority-owned by the kingdom’s Public Investment Fund, operates several extraction sites in the kingdom and is central to supporting the country's mining ambitions.

Under its new corporate strategy, Ma'aden aims to grow tenfold by 2040 and to move into strategic minerals to fuel the growth of downstream industries in Saudi Arabia. In 2023, the company teamed up with the PIF to also pursue global mining investment opportunities.

Saudi Arabia has more than 5,300 mining sites, valued at about $1.3 trillion, containing minerals including gold, silver, copper, zinc, phosphate, bauxite and limestone, a 2022 study by the Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources showed.

Ma’aden has undertaken one of the world’s largest single-jurisdiction exploration programme in the Arabian Shield. Jabal Shayban has been a key centre for mineral exploration, with programmes dating back to the 1940s. However, Wadi Al Jaww is a potential new discovery, with no prior exploration work at the site, Ma’aden said.

“The exploration project remains at an early stage, and Ma’aden’s understanding of the mineralised zone is still developing. Work to assess and interpret the data acquired so far is continuing and will inform drilling activities through 2025,” the company added.

Drilling at Mansourah-Massarah in December 2023 showed high-grade gold deposits, measuring 10.4 grams per tonne (g/t) and 20.6g/t, respectively, within 400 metres of the mine.

“These results continue to strengthen our view that an underground operation could be sustained at Mansourah-Massarah and drilling is planned for 2025 to further grow and convert mineral resources estimates,” Ma’aden said.

Higher-grade mines typically have densities of eight to 10g/t, while lower-grade mines have densities of one to four g/t. The higher the ore grade, the greater its value, and the extraction process becomes easier.

Mansourah-Massarah had gold resources of almost seven million ounces at the end of 2023 and production capacity of 250,000 ounces a year. In comparison, Russia’s largest gold mine, Sukhoi Log, had reserves of 40 million ounces as of 2020. South Africa’s South Deep mine has about 32.8 million ounces of gold reserves.

When it comes to production, the Nevada Gold Mines complex in the US is the largest, with an annual production of about 3.3 million ounces, representing close to 3 per cent of the global gold production.

Separately, Saudi Aramco, the world's largest oil-producing company, signed a non-binding agreement with Ma’aden to form a minerals exploration and mining joint venture in the kingdom.

The proposed joint venture would focus on energy transition minerals, including extracting lithium from high-concentration deposits and advancing cost-effective direct lithium extraction technologies. Commercial lithium production could start by 2027, Aramco said on Wednesday.

The joint venture would seek to unlock the potential of the kingdom’s high-value mineral resources, to help meet growing demand for lithium and other transition minerals domestically and globally, the company added.

Aramco has identified several areas with a high lithium concentration of up to 400 parts per million. Lithium is a fundamental component of the energy transition, essential for production in fast-growing sectors such as electric vehicles, energy storage and renewables.

The global demand for lithium has tripled over the past five years. The joint venture could potentially help meet the kingdom’s forecasted demand for lithium, which is expected to grow 20-fold between 2024 and 2030, supporting an estimated 500,000 electric vehicle batteries and 110GW of renewables, Aramco said.