Saudi Arabian Mining Company (Ma’aden) and Saudi Aramco have signed a shareholders’ agreement to create a joint venture for mineral exploration and hard-rock mining. Ma’aden will hold 51 percent and Aramco 49 percent. The venture’s exploration acreage covers roughly 182,000 square kilometres — close to 10 percent of the kingdom’s land area.
A 100-Kilometre Corridor
The acreage sits within what geologists call the transitional zone, a belt about 100 kilometres wide. Copper is the primary target, alongside zinc, lead and rare earth elements — materials whose demand is tied to electric vehicles, power grids, energy storage systems and renewable generation.
Ninety Years of Subsurface Data
The venture pairs the geological and geophysical database Aramco has built over more than 90 years with Ma’aden’s exploration track record. Artificial intelligence, advanced computational algorithms and high-performance computing will be used to interpret that data.
Saleh Mohammed Al-Saleh, Aramco’s vice president for transition minerals, said the company has assembled over nine decades the largest volume of geological and geophysical data held for any single basin. Darryl Clark, Ma’aden’s executive vice president for exploration, said the venture advances the company’s ambitions by combining its own exploration expertise with what its partner brings.
The Copper Calculation
Copper accounts for more than 20 percent of the global mined-minerals market, valued at 1.2 trillion dollars. The copper market itself is currently worth about 250 billion dollars and is projected to exceed 400 billion dollars by 2035.
A Plan First Announced in 2025
The agreement puts into effect a plan the two companies announced in January 2025. It takes effect once the required internal and regulatory clearances are complete, including approvals under competition rules.
This story was produced in the newsroom from the disclosed sources named above.
