RIYADH: Saudi Arabian state oil giant Aramco’s project to extract lithium is “promising, but not yet commercially viable”, the kingdom’s mining minister told Reuters on Wednesday.
Aramco has partnered with the King Abdullah University for Science and Technology (KAUST) for the pilot, Bandar Alkhorayef said.
Lithium Infinity, also known as Lihytech, a start-up launched out of KAUST, is leading the extraction project with cooperation from Saudi mining company Ma’aden and Aramco.
Lithium is a key component in the batteries of electric cars, laptops, and smartphones. Reuters previously reported that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates’ national oil companies planned to extract the mineral from oil runoffs.
Alkhorayef also confirmed that Saudi Arabian mining company Manara Minerals was looking at investing in Pakistan’s Reko Diq mine, saying that the Saudi Development Fund could contribute over $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.
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“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-controlled miner Ma’aden and the $925 billion Public Investment Fund (PIF), was set up as part of the kingdom’s efforts to diversify its economy away from oil, including by buying minority stakes in assets overseas.
Executives from Manara visited Pakistan in May last year for talks about buying a stake in the Reko Diq mine, considered one of the world’s largest underdeveloped copper-gold areas by global mining company Barrick Gold, which owns the project jointly with Pakistan.
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