Aramco and Maaden have signed a shareholders’ agreement to establish a joint venture focused on mineral exploration and hard-rock mining in Saudi Arabia. The proposed venture would be owned 51% by Maaden and 49% by Aramco.
Aramco and Maaden have signed a shareholders’ agreement to establish a joint venture focused on mineral exploration and hard-rock mining in Saudi Arabia. The proposed venture would be owned 51% by Maaden and 49% by Aramco.
Exploration would focus on Zone-4, or the Transition Zone, within the Arabian Platform. Covering approximately 182,000 km², the area forms a roughly 100-km-wide corridor running parallel to the Arabian Shield. Copper will be the principal target, alongside zinc, lead and rare earth elements.
The partnership will combine Maaden’s minerals expertise with more than nine decades of geological and geophysical data accumulated by Aramco. Advanced algorithms, AI and high-performance computing will be used to move from regional screening to target definition and, ultimately, discovery.
For the subsurface community, the venture provides a significant example of how data, expertise and computing capabilities developed for petroleum exploration can be applied to mineral systems at regional scale.
The joint venture remains subject to corporate and regulatory approvals and antitrust clearance.
