Head of Iranian Mines and Mining Industries Development and Renovation Organization (IMIDRO) Khodadad Gharibpour in the meeting with Australian Ambassador to Iran Lyndall Sachs called for cooperation with the Australian side in various areas including training, exploration, extraction, and new technologies, imidro.gov.ir reported.

“In-depth exploration and extraction is one of our main needs for the development of the mining sector and we intend to benefit from research and development as well as the technical knowledge of Australian companies in this regard,” he said adding that these areas were a priority for cooperation between the two sides.

He added “Small size [Iranian] mining companies are also looking for cooperation in the fields of education, technology, exploration, and extraction,” as Australia is one of the world’s leading countries in the mining industry.

“The officials of the two countries should support and promote cooperation between the two sides’ private sectors,” Gharibpour said.

The IMIDRO head also emphasized Iran’s position in steel production and added, “In the first half of this year, despite the fact that the world’s largest producers reduced production, Iran was able to increase output by 10 percent.”

“Iran is expected to produce more than 30 million tons of steel ingots this year, of which about half will be exported.”

He also referred to the plan for increasing the country’s steel production capacity in the southern coasts and said, “Currently, we have two projects with 10 million tons of steel production capacity in southern Iran, and importing iron ore from Australia will be among the suitable options for the feedstock of these projects.”

Iran’s proven oil and gas reserves are the world’s fourth and first respectively. But with its oil industry under a strict sanctions regime which has cut revenues, the country is beginning to take stock of its other resources and mining is emerging as a new field which Iran can count on for revenue generation, Press TV wrote.

The sector holds a key advantage over the oil industry: It is much harder to sanction the mining industry because of its immense diversity. From extremely sensitive radioactive materials to such ordinary substances as lime, the sector includes as many as 120 elements.

“There is a great variety of materials here, and secondly, the variety of consumers and producers of these materials is much greater than that of petroleum products,” Deputy Minister of Industry, Mine and Trade Mehdi Karbasian told Tasnim News Agency on Wednesday.

“If you list the number of oil entities in the world, it will be 10 to 15. Moreover, if you leave out those five or six main powers, no one else will be involved – the United States, Iraq, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Libya, Algeria, Kuwait, and the UAE which add up to 10 countries,” he added.

Other than that, oil is an extremely politicized field. It is more political than commercial, having been the subject of many colonial games from the time of its inception and frequent wars and conflicts in the most recent history and our time.

Iran’s oil industry is currently on the frontline of the fight against the US, which has slapped the sector with the most aggressive sanctions ever, to drive the Islamic Republic’s oil exports down to zero and dry up its revenues.

The Trump administration has broadened the scope of its sanctions on steel, aluminum, copper and iron trade, “but exports still continue because the consumer needs them,” Karbasian said.

In January, a senior official said Iran expected its steel exports to touch 10 million tons in the year to March 21, 2020 despite “tyrannical” sanctions imposed on the country by the US.

The announcement came the same month the Trump administration imposed new sanctions on Iran’s metals sector, targeting the construction, manufacturing, textiles, mining, aluminum, copper, iron and steel industries.

Iran is a leading producer of steel in the world, with officials saying exports continue despite the US sanctions.

The country plans to raise steel output to 55 million tons a year by 2025, of which 20 to 25 million tons would be earmarked for export.

Iran holds about seven percent of the world’s proven mineral reserves estimated at 60 billion tons, which include 68 types of minerals. However, mineral products account for only 0.6 percent of its GDP.

At current rates, Iran’s mineral reserves are worth $700 billion, “but to be honest, this is definitely not an exact number,” according to Karbasian.

Assuming that the value of Iran’s mineral reserves is at least $700 billion, its added value would be $4 trillion, he said.

“Today, we only know about mines that are open; in other words, we have information up to a depth of 100 and 150 meters of land, and we declare our reserves based on that, while we have not yet gone to the mines at great depths,” he said.

Like developed countries such as South Korea, Japan, and even Australia and South America, where mining has shifted from the land to the oceans, “if we go down to the deep mines, we will surely achieve very positive results,” Karbasian said.

However, the extractives industry in Iran is underdeveloped and major investment is needed to bring the sector out of the cold.

In January, the country launched a pilot project for extraction of rare earth after obtaining the technology for deep-level mining, with one official calling it a “big event”.

Every year, Iran imports 180 tons of rare earth elements which are used in a wide range of consumer products such as catalysts in cars and oil refineries, televisions, superconductors and fiber optics.

Rare earth elements are a group of mostly strategic metals which appear in low concentrations in the ground. They have lately emerged as one of the fronts in an escalating trade war between China and the United States.

In June, officials said a heavy mineral sands prospect in northwest Iran was ready for production of titanium, marking another milestone in the country’s sourcing of strategic metals.

The Qara-Aghaj deposit near Urmia, estimated to hold 120 million tons of titanium-bearing ores, was brought into operation, pending the establishment of processing plants, provincial Deputy Head of the Industry, Mine and Trade Organization Parisa Abedpour told IRNA.

Qara-Aghaj is one of the largest known titanium ore deposits, containing 30 percent of Iran’s overall reserves. The other major titanium prospect is Kahnuj in Kerman Province, estimated to hold 150 million tons. The Fanuj mine in Iran’s Sistan and Baluchestan Province is another base for titanium deposits.

The operation of the Kahnuj plant put Iran in the league of a few countries which produce titanium – the strategic metal of the century, named after the powerful Titan gods in Greek mythology.

“Iran mine sector will not only meet the needs of the country’s industrial plants and construction industry, but they will also increase its exports to some $9-$10 billion worth of minerals and other products by the end of the year,” Deputy Industry, Mining and Trade Minister Jafar Serqini said on the sidelines of a gathering of the country’s supreme council of mining in the city of Zanjan, IRNA reported.

Back in November, the ministry announced that the value of Iranian mineral exports increased by 11.7 percent in the first six months of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21-September 22), compared to the figure for last year’s similar period.

Based on the data released by the ministry, a total of 15.8 million tons of minerals and mining products worth $3.891 billion were exported to other countries in the first half of the current year.

The data also indicated that nearly 40 percent of the total export target for the country’s mining sector had been achieved.

Steel ingot was the top exported product in the sector with $1.198 billion worth of exports, followed by iron ore and iron ore concentrate with $617 million in value, steel products worth $575 million, and cathode copper valued at $262 million, as well as rolled steel products at $230 million.

China, Iraq, Indonesia, Ghana, Pakistan, Turkey, Afghanistan, the UAE, Oman, and Thailand were the major importers of minerals and mining industry products from Iran in the six months.

The value of mineral exports to China reached $1.2 billion, while Iraq imported $454 million of such Iranian products; Indonesia’s imports stood at $422 million, Thailand at $302 million, and Turkey at $296 million.