Ivanhoe Electric (NYSE America, TSX: IE) is forming a 50/50 joint venture with Saudi Arabian miner Ma’aden to explore for metals considered key for the world’s energy transition in the Middle eastern country.
As part of the deal, Ma’aden will invest $126.5 million in Ivanhoe Electric equity, which grants the Gulf’s largest miner a 9.9% stake in the company, mining magnate Robert Friedland’s latest endeavour.
From that figure, $66 million will go to the JV to fund exploration and Ivanhoe Electric will keep the remaining $60 million to advance its own portfolio of US mineral projects.
“Our joint venture will embark on the largest exploration program ever conducted using our highly powerful and disruptive Typhoon geophysical surveying system,” Friedland, Ivanhoe Electric’s executive chairman, said in the statement.
Friedland was referring to the company’s electrical pulse-powered geophysical surveying transmitter technology, which can detect metals buried as deep as 1.5 kilometres underground. This makes it an ideal tool for surveying many parts of Saudi Arabia, where the bedrock is hidden by a sand and gravel cover that can exceed 1 km in depth, the company said.
The partners will look for battery metals such as copper, nickel and lithium, but will also search for gold, silver and iron ore.
Ivanhoe Electric’s proprietary technology, created by I-Pulse Inc. of Toulouse, France, is already in use at the company’s Santa Cruz copper project in Arizona.
The company said it currently had three Typhoon units, one of which will be deployed to Saudi Arabia. Three more of the surveying equipment will be purchased by the JV, the partners said.
The first of these new generation Typhoon units is expected to be delivered in the first half of 2024.
Friedland made his fortune from the Voisey’s Bay nickel project in Canada in the 1990s. Since then, he has been involved in some of the biggest mineral discoveries in the world, including the giant Oyu Tolgoi copper mine in Mongolia and the Kamoa-Kakula copper mine in Democratic Republic of Congo.
Forbes estimates Friedland’s holdings are worth $2.7 billion as of May 2023.
