TITLE:
Mineral Industry in Egypt-Part I: Metallic Mineral Commodities
AUTHORS:
Abdel-Zaher M. Abouzeid, Abdel-Aziz M. Khalid
KEYWORDS:
Egypt Mineral Resources; Geological Aspects; Mining; Mineral Processing; Metallic Ores; Mineral Industry Investments
JOURNAL NAME:
Natural Resources,
Vol.2 No.1,
March
7,
2011
ABSTRACT: This The mineral potential in Egypt is quite high. Almost all sorts of industrial minerals such as metallic and non-metallic commodities exist in commercial amounts. However, Egypt imports many of the mineral commodities needed for the local mineral industries. The main reason for this is that the investors, either the governmental or the private sectors, refrain from investing into the mineral industry for prospecting, evaluation, and developing the mining and mineral processing technologies. This is because the return on investment in the mining industry is generally low and the pay back period is relatively long compared with easy-to-get money projects. Another reason is the disarray of the mining laws and regulations and lack of administrative capability to deal with domestic and international investors and solve the related problems. Also, lack of skilled personnel in the field of mining and mineral processing is an additional factor for the set back of the mining industry in Egypt. This is why the mining technology in Egypt is not very far from being primitive and extremely simple, with the exception of the underground mining of coal, North of Sinai, and Abu-Tartur phosphate mining, where fully automated long wall operations are designed. Also, the recent gold and tin-tantalum-niobium projects are being designed on modern surface mining and mineral processing technologies. The present review presents an overview of the most important metallic mineral commodities in Egypt, their geological background, reserves and production rates. A brief mention of the existing technologies for their exploitation is also highlighted.