American magazine ‘Fortune’ has a piece on how the Saudis are seeking to diversify their economy, moving away from petroleum as the sole source of income. The country is rich in minerals, including gold, aluminum, and phosphates and the government seeks to capitalize on that. The piece notes that the Saudi gold mines are also ancient, perhaps comprising the legendary King Solomon’s Gold Mines. According to the article, Saudi Arabia seeks to become the world’s leading exporter of diammonium phosphate, a fertilizer, and become a major aluminum exporter as well. The article also points out that the value of the ores is one thing, but processing them—through energy intensive production—gives the country a real relative advantage.

These industries, however, are capital intensive, not labor intensive. That means they will not do a lot to alleviate unemployment pressures. Perhaps up-line industries might develop from them, though—things like jewelry making and the production of aluminum utensils—providing a little help on that front.

Saudi Arabia’s new gold mine
Forget oil. Prospectors are looking to strike it rich off of gold - the shiny kind
Barney Gimbel

(Fortune Magazine) — A new generation of fortune hunters is seeking riches under the sands of Saudi Arabia.

But this time they’re searching for gold - the shiny kind, not the black, liquid variety - and potentially even more lucrative metals and minerals. “Gold, copper, phosphate, bauxite - this place could be the next Canada or Australia,” says Inés Scotland, CEO of Citadel Resource Group, an Australian company that is mining copper in the kingdom. “The geology here is fantastic.”

Prospectors have been extracting gold in Arabia for more than 3,000 years - some say King Solomon’s riches came from here - but the Saudi government only recently opened up the land for large-scale commercial exploration and production.

“Saudi Arabia is the size of a small continent,” says Abdallah Dab-bagh, CEO of the state-run mining company, Ma’aden (whose name means “minerals” in Arabic). “But if you look at the amount of exploration drilling that has been done here from 1945 until today, it’s the equivalent of what happens in Canada in one year.”
…