OPINION | Indo-Saudi ties can evolve to another level with collaboration on critical minerals

While much of the global discourse has fixated on a handful of established mineral powerhouses, India and Saudi Arabia have flown under the radar, so far. (Source: PTI)

Critical minerals have undeniably become a key currency for geopolitical power. The race to secure these has resulted in a global scramble. This scramble has already begun to redraw geopolitical contours, with nations leveraging resource endowments as instruments of statecraft and forging new alliances around supply security.

India’s critical mineral import portfolio hinges on a narrow set of countries, held together by mercurial threads of geopolitics revealing vulnerabilities in our supply chain. A single point of failure, driven by fractured relationships with key critical mineral suppliers, could derail India's ambitions to build a robust domestic value addition ecosystem.

It is within this context that a mineral partnership with Saudi Arabia acquires renewed salience. In the evolving Indo-West Asian corridor, such a collaboration could recalibrate supply chains, balance Chinese dominance in processing, and position India as a more resilient actor in the emerging mineral economy.

Saudi Arabia sits atop unexplored critical mineral wealth

Despite Saudi Arabia sitting atop a largely untapped and unexplored critical mineral wealth, estimated at over $2.5 trillion, it is presently the 4th largest importer of mineral products. Additionally, the country is actively seeking to position itself as a global hub for mining and processing through the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 agenda.

With a geospatial advantage of connecting Central Asia, Middle-East and Africa, Saudi Arabia’s positioning can offer India a strategically located partner. In turn, India can provide a burgeoning clean energy market, technology partnerships in mineral processing, skills transfer and alignment with India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), thus expanding frontiers of collaboration.

Why Saudi Arabia matters for India in the minerals game

While much of the global discourse has fixated on a handful of established mineral powerhouses, India and Saudi Arabia have flown under the radar, so far. The Arabian Shield, spanning western Saudi Arabia, holds immense geological promise, housing deposits of nickel, cobalt, copper, rare earth elements (REE), zinc, phosphate. Recent Saudi efforts to liberalise its mining code, invite foreign and private exploration, and develop mineral processing zones signal intent and highlight the resolution to transition away from hydrocarbons- a reigning petrostate becoming a vital player in the green energy dialogue.

Towards this effort, the Kingdom is increasingly drawing investments towards key energy transition vectors like LNG expansion, EV manufacturing, green hydrogen, amid others. Unlike other mineral-rich states, Saudi Arabia offers political stability, infrastructure readiness, capital depth, and a futuristic outlook, all critical for de-risking the upstream value chain for India.

Saudi Arabia's Qassim, Al-Ghurayyah, Jabal Tawlah and other places in the Arabian Shield are undergoing a renaissance in exploration backed by state support.. As a result, Riyadh is now pitching mining as its third economic pillar after hydrocarbons and petrochemicals.

Geospatial argument to cement critical mineral ties

The corridor between India and Saudi Arabia lies at the crossroads of two maritime zones: the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, making logistics alliances an emerging axis of mineral diplomacy. Encased within this, the proposed IMEC infrastructure of ports, railways, and digital connectivity can be a trade facilitation route for critical mineral cooperation as well. For India, it can reduce transaction costs, save precious foreign exchanges and solve logistical bottlenecks in securing upstream resources from Saudi Arabia and even onward from Africa.

From oil wells to ore veins

For decades, oil tankers and a vibrant diaspora have carried India-Saudi ties across oceans. Today, the same currents of cooperation hint towards a new frontier of critical minerals supply chain.

India possesses latent strengths that are yet to be fully leveraged. It is home to the fifth-largest reserves of REEs, but exploration, extraction, and value addition remain underdeveloped due to institutional constraints, legacy monopolies, and hitherto limited private sector engagement.

Couched together with geopolitical risks emanating from single-source concentration of certain minerals constantly exposes India to supply chain vulnerabilities. Despite these roadblocks, India is steadily building domestic capacity in mineral processing and refining, whereas Saudi Arabia’s current value chain posits underdevelopment.

What India offers

India can offer lower operational costs through a rapidly maturing clean tech ecosystem, established industrial clusters, and highly skilled labor compared to processing in the US or European Union (EU).

On the other side, the Kingdom is flush with capital through the Public Investment Fund (PIF), which can open the door for Saudi investments into India’s mineral processing and refining projects. In turn, offering preferential access for Saudi into these emerging Indian facilities could serve a dual purpose: for Riyadh, it would mitigate its dependence on traditional processing hubs in East Asia; for New Delhi, it would secure long-term supply contracts and attract Saudi capital into India’s nascent critical minerals sector.

Moving forward

Recent dialogues toward a bilateral Memorandum of Understanding on critical minerals must now translate into institutional mechanisms. This could take the form of an India-Saudi Critical Minerals Joint Working Group, tasked with identifying co-investment opportunities, geological mapping exchanges, and co-located refining and processing infrastructure in Special Economic Zones (SEZs).

Rather than exporting raw ore for midstream enhancement, Saudi Arabia can process minerals domestically with India under joint ventures, improving value capture and market access. Further, India can provide decades of low-cost, field-tested expertise for exploration to enable faster movement towards feasibility and extraction phases.

Since a crucial component of the Kingdom’s 2030 Vision is building a talent pool through robust training, India’s skilling ecosystem provides a compelling advantage.

Going beyond, there could be a trilateral agreement between India, Saudi Arabia and certain resource rich African countries. Initial Saudi investment in Africa highlights the eagerness of the Kingdom as a facilitator of investment to build expertise in the African region for domestic capacity building. India-Africa have ongoing partnerships suffused in the vocabulary of mutual development cooperation: India provides technical expertise, human capital and sustainable mining technologies, Africa provides a natural resource base. This can be topped with Saudi investment, strengthening the natural advantages of all three partners by providing the necessary financial muscle and strategic market access- in the pursuit of new axes of energy diplomacy.

Why Riyadh must hedge amid geopolitical uncertainty

Historically, Riyadh has leaned towards Washington, Moscow, and Beijing to balance its commodity partnerships. Washington is increasingly framing supply chains in security terms (CHIPS Act, Inflation Reduction Act), Moscow is under sanctions, and Beijing is weaponising critical minerals supply chains through export bans. In the US and the EU, Saudi investments already face scrutiny.

For Saudi’s Vision 2030 to succeed, hedging between great powers is essential. India provides a safer bet, a rising power that is not adversarial, but not domineering either, whereby both countries view geopolitics from a multi-polarist lens. While commodities like critical minerals are usually cyclical in nature, Riyadh cannot afford to wait. Partnering with India now can help the Kingdom secure downstream hedges before prices and competition tighten.

If framed strategically, India can position itself as a low-cost, technically competent, demand-linked partner and elevate the diplomatic relations into a partnership of shared value creation and mutual beneficence.

(Meheli Roy Choudhury is a Research Consultant at Centre for Climate Change and Energy Transition, Chintan Research Foundation.)

Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.