Saudi Arabia Doubles Exploration, Opens 13,000 km² | Abdulrahman Al-Belushi

Saudi Arabia has doubled exploration spending year over year, reaching SAR 1.05 billion in 2024, as the Kingdom pushes to expand grassroots discovery while global budgets remain under pressure. Speaking with Kitco Mining at PDAC 2026 in Toronto, Abdulrahman Al-Belushi, Deputy Minister of Mineral Resources Management at Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources, outlined how mining is being positioned as a pillar of industrial strategy.

“We look at the mining sector as an economic play rather than a fiscal play,” Al-Belushi said, citing supply chain priorities across gold, copper, rare earths, zinc, and phosphate. Saudi Arabia has about 78,000 km² under exploration license and plans to tender 13,000 km² in 2026 under a merit-based system.

Al-Belushi also discusses:
• 60% of exploration spending going to grassroots work
• Up to $2 million reimbursable support per license, up to 15 licenses
• 15% performance bonds to back work commitments
• Saudi Arabia’s top 10 global ranking in Fraser Institute’s 2025 survey

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00:32 - Saudi Mining Vision and Industrial Strategy
01:36 - Arabian Shield Geology and Deposit Types
04:05 - Gold, Copper, Rare Earths, and Phosphate Priorities
06:28 - Exploration Spending Doubles to SAR 1B
07:54 - $2M Exploration Enablement Program Explained
09:40 - 13,000 km² Tender Round and 2026 Pipeline
12:14 - 100% Foreign Ownership and Entry Model
13:59 - Partner Strategy and Lessons From Oil Sector
15:43 - Saudi Arabia’s Processing Hub Ambitions
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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Kitco Mining's on-site coverage of PDXD is presented by Gold Mining, US Gold Mining, Uranium Energy Corp. and Uranium Royalty Corp.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Hello and welcome to Kitco Mining with me, Paul Harris, here at the 2026 Prospectors and Developers Association Conference in Toronto in Canada. Today we're talking about mineral exploration in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and I have great pleasure to be joined by Deputy Minister Abdel Khraman Al-Balushi, Deputy Minister of Mineral Resources Management from Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources. Deputy Minister Al-Balushi. Alan Frahmah Havan Bikam. Thank you for having me. A pleasure. Now this Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is making a big push to develop its mineral resources. What is the goal the kingdom is working towards and in what time frame?

SPEAKER_02 0:56

Well, thank you for this question. The kingdom is a paradigm shift in the way that we look at the mining sector. We look at the mining sector as an economic play rather than a fiscal play. So we see the benefits that the miners and explorers are creating, and we want to protect and we want to support and incentivize that. I come from the Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources, and as you rightly cited, industry comes first, and we need the material to support the growth of our national industrial strategy. We want to support our renewable energy manufacturing, defence manufacturing, but also many other sectors like pharma, pumps and equipment. This will require a lot of minerals and we want to continuously make the supply chains much more resilient.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

Okay. What is the geological potential of Saudi Arabia? It's quite a large country, it's relatively underexplored in terms of its mineral potential. What is the geological potential and what are the investment opportunities there?

SPEAKER_02 2:03

Lovely. So we believe that we've been endowed not only with oil and gas in the eastern part of Saudi, but the entire Arabian Shield is a mirror image of the Nubian Shield on the western part of the Red Sea. So where there is a lot of Tier 1 deposits that we see that are producing on Linia and the Nubian Shield, this must be reflected, geologically speaking, on the eastern part of that crater. And it's a beautiful mix of geology. All kinds of deposits are validated and some of them are already in production today. So you see the regenic gold deposits. We see the epithermal gold deposit of Mahdi Dahab, which we believe is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, gold mine globally. It's been in production, as some archaeologists would cite, somewhere around 3,000 years with King Solomon. We have also deposits that are VMS deposits, so barracks jabelsaid is a volcanic mass of sulphide deposit. And we've also validated the existence of porphyry copper systems on the eastern part of the Arabian Shield at the Suwaj Belt. That was via work done by the Saudi geological expert. And now we're working to prove SEDX deposits on the peripheries between our platform and the Arabian Shield. We also see a lot of polymetallics down in the southern part of the shield where companies like AMAC, a Saudi mining player, has been actively working on his district scale mining, where he have multiple deposits with the center of facilitation and processing facility. We're really excited, and of course, and we can't miss it, 50% of our resources is the phosphate commodity, where we are one of the largest exporters but players in the phosphate market. Today we produce six million tons of diamonium phosphate that's being exported to mainly Brazil and India. And we're looking to grow it much, much more in the near term.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

Okay. Now, Madden, the uh the national company recently announced a massive, a very large gold resource. What are the particular priorities of the kingdom in terms of which minerals it wants to develop? You you mentioned gold, you mentioned copper, polymetallics, phosphate. I think there's rare earths as well in the in the kingdom.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

So Maiden uh recent announcement uh was quite interesting. I was there at the site uh three weeks ago. I enjoyed seeing the aggressive and uh expedited exploration efforts that were done, but also making sure that the entire area is being developed. Wadi Jo deposit is still uh open at depth. Uh there's a lot of potential along strike, and uh we're hoping for more and more discoveries uh along in that uh in that region. Uh and when you look at the rare earth deposits, which is near Jabal Said uh in the Midir Manawara region, that's roughly 644 million tons of uh 0.4% uh total rare earth oxides uh that are being developed now, and hopefully it will be uh with the right processing uh partners and capabilities given Madden's partnership with with MP material on uh on this deposit. Uh a lot more discoveries uh are happening in the kingdom. We had a great case uh one of the early sites that we've tendered in exploration round one was al-Khenigia deposit. That was 300 square kilometers. We've tendered that in 2022. Today, by end of December 2025, they received a mining permit. And now they're going to develop a 75 million tons zinc uh asset at uh 2.11%, and they also have some copper and manganese streams. We're quite excited about economic prospectivity of the kingdom. We're hoping for larger tier one deposits to to uh come into uh development. Uh Monsura Masarra by Mahadr, as you mentioned, is our 10 million uh ounces uh deposits. Hopefully that will continue to grow as well, and we're hoping for much, much and uh much more uh tier one deposits.

SPEAKER_01 6:41

Okay, we're at an exploration conference, and I think it's fair to say that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has become one of the most attractive and sought-after exploration destinations in the world. How have you seen exploration kingdom spend in the kingdom increase in recent years?

SPEAKER_02 7:00

Well uh if we take a step back and we look at exploration spend globally, we see that it's been decreasing or staying steady, especially at the grassroot exploration stage. So if we take copper, for example, I believe since 2015 until 2025, grass root exploration share of total global exploration spending for copper decreased from 40% all the way to 25%. At a time where everyone is bullish about copper as a commodity. Everyone. In Saudi, from 2023 to 2024, our exploration spend, total exploration spend doubled. We reached uh a billion Saudi real of exploration spending, uh, 60% of which was on grassroots exploration. Well, yes, the kingdom is is uh is a new frontier where by default a lot of the exploration work will be in grassroots. However, we want to support that share of exploration spending. So we created what we call the exploration enablement program. It's a collaboration between the Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources and the Ministry of Investment, where we support exploration companies with current licenses on Class A minerals. These are metallic and precious minerals that are important to us in the kingdom and that are that usually supports industrialization. So we support them with a reimbursable grant for their geophysics, geochemistry, and drilling, and also their experts' cost in case they are training Saudi geologists. And that support is capped at$2 million per license, and each company could get 15 licenses. We've already launched Wave 1 and Wave 2 of the program, and today Wave 3 is open for applicants to qualify for the program, share their work program, and then each year we will review their work and then reimburse reimburse them based on the work that they do. However, they need to share the geological data with us. Making that data public to everyone will not only support our geologists but also the entire junior and uh major ecosystem that we have for exploration in Saudi to find that discovery fast.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

The most successful countries uh do that. I think you know Canada does that and other jurisdictions, the the public access to geological data is very much a key driver there. Now the the kingdom recently announced the next round uh of exploration concessions, you're opening up another large area to exploration. Um tell us about that. Where is it and what potential does that have?

SPEAKER_02 10:07

So over the past uh three years, uh we uh three and a half years of we've opened up around 45,000 square kilometers of uh lands via the tendering approach. But we also have the first come, first serve approach. So entire area today in the kingdom under exploration uh licenses is about uh 78,000 square kilometers, and that number continuously increases year over year. Uh we have more than a thousand exploration licenses, uh roughly 20% of which that is uh uh awarded via tendering today. If we look at the next tender round, which is uh tender round uh so we have tender round 10 that's ongoing now as we speak. 11 is uh is open now for qualification, uh and also 12 is also clear for a vessel, so we have uh we share with them our plans for 2026 and 2027. 2026 we have 13,000 square kilometers, and 2027 we have 20,000 square kilometers. These are mineralized belts of the kingdom that are being opened to a merit-based tender approach, not a signing bonus approach. I think round 11 is unique because uh it came from sites that we always believed that they're very prospective, and our Saudi Geological Survey worked on these sites safe drills, they validated some inventory resources in them. There is substantial uh geological data with open data rooms for anyone to access. Uh, and this will require uh more work to advance them quickly into hopefully uh resource definition stage and then later on to to uh development. Whether uh orogenic gold, porphyry copper, and an iron site. An iron or an IOGC site is still a debate between our geologists, and we'll hopefully let the next uh winner after that tender decide what kind of site is it.

SPEAKER_01 12:27

Okay. How can companies participate? What is the the model, the development model, the partnership model that the kingdom wants to see with companies?

SPEAKER_02 12:36

Well, number one hundred percent foreign ownership is allowed. Uh two, they don't need to create the company in Saudi if they're going through the tendering uh approach, they don't need to create the company in Saudi until they win that site and they win the competition. Then we'll give them 90 days to set up the company and go through the administrative process. Uh three, if they're looking to find Saudi partners, we will support with them. We organize during the Future Minerals Forum all these sessions where we bring together Saudi investors and exploration companies that are looking for partners. And four, what matters the most is the seriousness of and the commitment of these exploration companies, how they're gonna take all these previous learnings of finding resources and applying it into the kingdom. We make sure that people can submit a performance bond on these sites. So these exploration programs are backed up by by uh uh a performance bond, a bank note of 15% of the work that they're looking for and that they're they're committing themselves into in the future. Uh this is how we uh make sure that we get the best expertise, the right financial adaptation to these companies, and we can get our lands the quickest way to uh monetization.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

Okay. You've been successful in tracking in attracting some of the biggest names in the business, such as barrack mining, such as Ivanhoe Electric. The kingdom has had great success developing its oil resources over the past century now almost. What lessons have you learned from that past in and how are you using those lessons to to shape the direction you want for the mining sector?

SPEAKER_02 14:37

So we've been really lucky to to uh get these partners. And I think one of the key uh lessons is picking your partners in the right way. So in uh and a lot of our previous industries, oil and gas is one of them. However, if you look even at the mining sector, we've built our phosphate industry with mosaic. We've built our aluminum industry with with alcohol. So picking these strong partners really leapfrogs a lot of the developments that you have uh planned. And we look uh today we're here in Canada and we're picking a great partner in Canada, a great partner in Australia, country leading jurisdictions in the mining sector, can really make sure that we can uh advance our mining sector much quickly than others. So today we're we're also lucky. Uh a pleasure to have leading companies such as uh Zijin Mining, Vedanta Resources, where we have uh Makiw in mining, and you have plenty of uh junior players that are uh that have the track record, the strong track track record of discoveries, and new frontiers, but hopefully, uh and Saudi today as well.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

Okay. I want to return to something you said right at the start of our conversation: the fact that industry is first, and I think that's reflected in some of the other aspects of the your your policies and outreach with minerals in terms of the kingdom positioning itself as a centre of processing, not just for minerals produced and exploited in Saudi Arabia but for minerals produced elsewhere. Uh, you mentioned MP materials. Saudi Arabia wants to position itself as a processing hub for many different minerals. Um, how do you see that aspect evolving in the years to come?

SPEAKER_02 16:36

So this is our strength, right? In Saudi Arabia we've built our industrialization efforts very quickly. Over the past, we've seen it with the petrochemical industry, with the chemical industry, and a lot of other industries that really propelled the kingdoms, the canal development. When you look at the mining industries, uh they have a lot of support that they could get from in terms of industrial land, stable energy, access to ports, but then also consumption and consumers being in Saudi. We are one of the largest consumers of so many of these metals and will continue to increase because of our new infrastructure plans and future other uh industries like electric vehicle manufacturing that we have great objectives for. So today, when we look at the mining sector, we look at the sector that we want to protect, and this is not only uh a talk and promotion, however, there are great signals in the market that showcases this. Where I wanted to share with you that three days ago the Krazer Institute shared their latest uh index on the most attractive investment, uh investment attraction index, and we were finally one of the top ten globally as uh as a mining jurisdiction, which showcases our efforts into improving and developing the sector in every way possible, believe. In many metrics, we were even the first. Ranking is not really the objective, however, it shows uh to the market that we are uh not only uh uh talking, but really working the talk and we're making sure that we are delivering on it.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

Excellent. Well, congratulations on the success there, Deputy Minister Abelushi Shakran Lakra.

SPEAKER_02 18:26

Love we have to knock.

SPEAKER_01 18:28

And we have a lot more to come from the 2026 Prospectives and Developers Association here in Toronto in Canada. So stay tuned and hit that subscribe button. I'm Paul Harris, and this is Kitco Mining.

SPEAKER_00 18:40

Kitco Mining's on-site coverage of PDAC is presented by Gold Mining, US Gold Mining, Uranium Energy Corp, and Uranium Royalty Corp.