Saudi Mining Minister Bandar Alkhorayef said Reuters on Wednesday that Saudi Arabian mining company Manara Minerals was considering investing in Balochistan’s Reko Diq mine.
He added that the Saudi Development Fund could contribute more than $100 million to Pakistan’s mining infrastructure.
“Part of what we are looking at is how we can help Pakistan also in some infrastructure,” Alkhorayef said in an interview on the sidelines of the Future Minerals Forum in Riyadh.
“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.”
Manara, a joint venture between state-owned Ma’aden and the $925 billion Public Investment Fund (PIF), was created as part of the kingdom’s efforts to diversify its economy away from oil, including by purchasing minority stakes. in assets abroad.
Manara executives visited Pakistan in May last year to discuss purchasing a stake in the Reko Diq mine, considered one of the largest underdeveloped copper-gold areas in the world by global mining company Barrick Gold, which jointly owns the project. with Pakistan.
Separately, Alkhorayef also said that Saudi state oil giant Aramco’s project to extract lithium was “promising, but not yet commercially viable.”
Aramco has partnered with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) for the pilot, he said. Lithium Infinity, also known as Lihytech, a startup launched at KAUST, is leading the extraction project with the cooperation of Aramco and the Saudi mining company Ma’aden.
Lithium is a key component of batteries in electric cars, laptops and smartphones. Reuters It previously reported that national oil companies in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates planned to extract the mineral from oil runoff.
Aramco and Ma’aden today signed a non-binding term sheet to explore the creation of a mineral exploration and mining joint venture in the kingdom.
The proposed company “would focus on energy transition minerals, including the extraction of lithium from high-concentration deposits and the advancement of cost-effective direct lithium extraction (DLE) technologies,” the two companies said during the Future Minerals Forum in Riyadh.
Commercial lithium production could begin in 2027.
