#Saudi State Miner Will Spend ‘Huge Amount’ on Battery Metals - Bloomberg video

Saudi State Miner Will Spend ‘Huge Amount’ on Battery Metals - Bloomberg

Saudi Arabia’s state miner said it would start to invest heavily in battery metals, as prices soar with the uptake of electric vehicles and the growth of wind and solar power.

“In the next 10 to 20 years we are going to spend huge amount of money looking for those metals in Saudi Arabia,” Abdulaziz Al Harbi, chief executive officer of Maaden, said to Bloomberg Television in Riyadh, when asked about nickel and lithium.

Investors are increasingly focused on what deposits of metals needed to make batteries the vast desert kingdom might contain. EV Metals Group Plc, an Australian company, announced a $3 billion project this month for the exploration and processing of minerals including lithium and nickel in Saudi Arabia. It’s unclear if Maaden will be involved.

The company’s earnings have soared this year amid a broad commodities boom, driven by major economies recovering from the coronavirus pandemic. Maaden made a profit of 1.27 billion riyals ($340 million) in the third quarter, up from 6.5 million riyals a year earlier. Revenue rose to a record of 6.7 billion riyals.