Saudi Pivot to Minerals as Deficits Grow and Oil Plunges
Maaden stock is up 45% in 2026, as Riyadh pivots hard into minerals, the next strategic frontier.
Riyadh’s effort to transform its minerals sector from a nascent domestic industry into a globally integrated strategic one has reached a new phase in 2026. With Donald Trump openly threatening a renewed oil price war, Saudi is once again facing the prospect of structurally lower prices whilst its reliance on debt to fund public spending and private sector growth increases. Hence, the Saudi accelerated bet on minerals is not just about diversification, but also about redefining the pillars of the Saudi political economy post oil.
The Strategic Logic
In January, Saudi announced it is committing $110 billion to expand its minerals and metals industry over the next decade to build a second export and industrial base around mining minerals. This signals that mining is growingly being treated as economic treasure in the way oil is, with Maaden’s chief executive presenting the investment programme publicly and tying it to a production scaling plan that aims to triple phosphates and gold and double aluminium, which is an attempt to build large scale commodity supplies enough to matter for export.
