In his first six months in Saudi Arabia veteran miner John Webster says he’s experienced something he hasn’t seen much in more than 40 years in the industry. “Nowhere have I come across push back,” he says. “It’s always push forward.”
Webster, recently appointed CEO of Saudi explorer Gold and Minerals Co, kicked off Future Minerals Forum week in Riyadh with an announcement about securing a sought-after exploration licence via a Saudi Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources auction.
He says it continued a whirlwind first six months in the kingdom.
“I’ve spoken to a lot of potential international partners that would like to come to Saudi Arabia.
“I’ve been involved with [contract services provider] ESNAD, the mining ministry and the environment agency.
“All of the guys I’ve been interacting with are all looking for ways to help.
“There are no groups that are pushing back. The local population is extremely friendly. They’re highly educated.
“We’ve met with most of the universities here and every area we see [there is] promising potential for expanding co-operation and the supply of Saudi students into the industry.”
A mining engineer who has worked all over the world since starting his career in Western Australia’s iron ore industry in the 1980s, Webster isn’t the only one impressed by the cohesion increasingly being shown by Saudi government agencies and utilities, and an expanding array of foreign actors, aligned behind the kingdom’s Vision 2030 economic goals.
One of which is massive expansion of its domestic mining and metals production base, allied with investment in offshore feeder projects and sources of strategic minerals.
Webster is part of an inflow of international expertise, energy, funding and “ideas” contributing to rapid expansion of a modern mineral exploration and mining ecosystem in Saudi Arabia.
He joined a Future Minerals Forum panel tasked with answering the question: can the mining industry of the future emerge in Saudi Arabia? Can it, on one hand, harness the best technology and thinking available in the industry today to move its nascent mining sector forward at a faster rate than seems currently possible elsewhere? And in doing so support the country’s ambitious Vision 2030 push to quadruple the size of the domestic industry over the next six years.
Can it also be an ESG leader, using the Luxor light now on the annual Riyadh forum and perhaps the world’s deepest reserves of so-called patient capital to endorse 21st-century environmental, social and governance standards?
The answer to the first question, of course, was a resounding yes from Webster and other panellists who included the head of exploration at Saudi mining major Ma’aden, the country’s deputy mining minister and other senior local and international business leaders.
“The international companies we speak to are very excited about being able to get into the Saudi Arabian market,” he said.
“The geological potential and the technology that we have available really helps with the ability to fast track discovery and fast track [discoveries] into production, which is our aim as a company.”
The geological potential was underscored by Ma’aden executive vice president of exploration, Dr Darryl Clark, an Australian geologist with more than three decades in mining who joined the company last year. But he was also keen to highlight the pieces coming together in the Saudi picture that made it different to other jurisdictions with lofty ambitions.
“I’ve been discovering, building and operating mines across many geological terrains on the planet and … there are a couple of unique geological features here that get me very excited,” he said.
“But there is also the background [picture].
“We have great infrastructure. We have great civility [and] stability. They are key ingredients.
“Saudi Arabia, geologically speaking, is broken up into two big chunks. On the western side we have the Arabian-Nubian shield and on the eastern side we have the platform rocks.
“The [prospectivity of] the shield is well known. There are good copper mines in there; plenty of gold mines [and] lots of lead and zinc. So we have proven mineral endowment there.”
Clark said announcements by Ma’aden at this year’s FMF about new gold and copper finds at Wadi Al Jaww and Shayban in the Arabian Shield region spoke to the “massive residual prospectivity still left there”.
“The other unique thing is what’s happening on the platform,” he said.
“Yesterday on this stage Aramco and Ma’aden made a joint venture announcement about exploring the platform for large deposits of energy transition minerals, [including] lithium.
“There’s clear geological evidence that there’s very large sedimentary-hosted copper deposits located on the platform.
“So again, great prospectivity.”
The alliance between Ma’aden and the Saudi Arabia Oil Company, or Aramco, one of the world’s largest companies, sets a new marker for the multi-sector cooperation formed around the kingdom’s grand economic and social diversification plan.
“The key under vision 2030 has been diversification,” Saudi Arabia minister of investment, Khalid Al-Falih, said at the conference.
“Oil and gas will continue to be the bedrock of the Saudi economy for many, many decades to come.
“But we’re building with the bedrock a skyscraper of different sectors and some of them, most of them, are reinforcing of each other.
“Mining to us is important as a sector but it’s even more important as one that is going to feed into industrialisation.”
Al-Falih said a modern, large-scale mining and mineral processing sector would create a “huge pull” for transport, logistics, construction and other ancillary services, for mining services and technology, and for skilled technicians, geoscientists and engineers.
“So as important as we see it as a sector which is growing faster than the [broader] economy is growing, we see it also as feeding into other sectors,” he said.
The Saudi government, working with groups such as Ma’aden, continues to step up development of the country’s talent pipeline, which is seen as a potential bottleneck for mining and metals expansion.
A unified approach to this issue, as well as to mining’s long-standing new technology adoption stalemate, could be among important side-effects of the closer ties being forged between a trillion-dollar oil business and fast-climbing mining enterprise in an environment such as that being cultivated in Saudi.
“Saudi Arabia’s transformation as one of the global leaders in oil and gas and petrochemicals provides a compelling blueprint for the mining sector,” CEO of Riyadh-based Modern Industrial Investment Holding Group, Abdulaziz Al Hamwah, told the forum.
“I have no doubt that the experience of the oil sector … will definitely help the mining sector to succeed much faster than before.”
Lorenzo Simonelli, CEO of $46 billion oil services and technology company, Baker Hughes, told FMF 2025 closer technology collaboration between the adjacent industries was a significant opportunity.
“There are lots of inefficiencies in the mining industry, as we’ve had in the oil and gas industry, that we can learn from together,” he said.
“Recovery rates … For example, how we optimise copper recovery, or lithium brine: how do you optimise the recovery of lithium?
“We know there’s a lot of sub-surface information. At the end of the day the minerals are like oil and gas. So we have the technology and the know-how of being able to optimise that production by taking out sub-surface knowledge and applying the data analytics.
“There is a lot of technology that can be applied. The reason we see it as an opportunity is because we can actually bring today the technology that’s required, at a lower cost point, to make the industry more efficient and be able to supply [the minerals] required.”
Inauguration of the Riyadh chapter of the global Young Mining Professionals network at FMF 2025 by backers, Ma’aden and Saudi’s Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources, was another key announcement at this year’s forum. Ministry boss Bandar Alkhorayef described the launch as an “important block in our mining ecosystem building”.
Stephanie Saliba (pictured above), chapter founder and Kearney strategy consultant, metals and mining, said: “What’s happening in Saudi Arabia, the incredible pace of transformation, the drive for change, and the ambition for growth, is so energising.
“With mineral wealth estimated at $2.5 trillion, Saudi Arabia is strategically positioned to play a pivotal role in the global mining sector. But this is only possible by putting people – young people – at the centre of its development.”
That theme was echoed by Dr Muhammad Al-Saggaf, president of King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM), who told FMF 2025 new generation talent and leadership was vital to the kingdom achieving its future vision.
“Strategists and planners focus a lot on investment … but talent is, if not as important, even more important than the investment,” he said.
“The relationship between them is multiplicative. It is talent that amplifies and enables and allows the investment to achieve its goals and without that talent you will be multiplying by zero.”
Al-Saggaf said KFUPM’s cohort of women engineers had risen significantly since the university started admitting female students in 2019 and allowing them to pursue bachelor’s degrees two years later. Overall female employment levels have reportedly meanwhile doubled in the past few years.
“You cannot win a game with half a team. You cannot run an economy with half a population,” he said.
“We have to tap into the talent of everybody in the community and in society to move this economy forward. And this is what we have done at KFUPM. Our university has been a men-only university for nearly 60 years.
“[Now it] has the highest enrolment of females in engineering anywhere in the world at 50%.
“It is very different from the rest of the world.”
