Official media in Iran are reporting the discovery of what is thought to be the largest known porphyry copper deposit in the Middle East.

The resource, said to contain around 3bn tonnes of copper ore, would, if verified, quickly move on to the radar of companies driving the transition to green energy – vastly expanded volumes of copper are needed to drive that transition, meaning the race is on to locate giant deposits, the likes of which some Iranian officials are claiming to have discovered. What’s more, a huge lithium deposit claimed by Iran already has commodity dealers excited about the potentially immense role Iran could play in supplying raw materials to emerging green industries, such as electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing.

State broadcaster IRIB and official news agency IRNA relayed news of the copper discovery, also bigger than anything of its kind in North Africa, that appears to have been first reported by provincial media covering the southeastern province of Kerman.

“The future of nations is tied to the copper industry,” Amir Hassan Zadeh, deputy for economic affairs of the governorate of Kerman, was quoted as saying, noting Iran is located on a very favourable part of the world's copper belt.

Porphyry copper deposits are made up of orebodies that can also contain silver, gold and molybdenum.  Such deposits are currently the world's largest source of copper ore.

The discovered deposit in Kerman is located in the vicinity of Sarcheshmeh, which already boasts a major open-cast copper mining and refining complex with a workforce of 18,000 exploiting a giant lode estimated as containing more than a billion tonnes of copper.

The new deposit was mapped with the drilling of 106 exploratory boreholes with a length of 93,000 metres. Plans are in place for a second exploration phase that will drill 60 boreholes with a length of around 80,000 sqm. This could conceivably boost the porphyry copper estimate to 4bn tonnes or more.

Iran currently ranks fifth in the world for copper reserves. The country also has extensive copper reserves in Sungun near the country’s northwestern border with Turkey. In fact, last week saw the launch of copper production in Sungun, where a modern smelter has been set up for output produced by open-cast operations.

The National Iranian Copper Industries Co (NICICO) is the third largest company on the Tehran Stock Exchange.

A NICICO executive, Behrouz Rahmati, noted tht Iran's mineral reserves stood at 57bn tonnes, ranking the country as one of the top 10 mineral-rich nations in the world.

He said that copper, the third most consumed metal in the world, has already brought Iran $10bn in foreign exchange.

Analysts say that given the expanding appetite for copper driven by the green energy revolution, there is still a sore lack of large-scale copper mines worldwide.

This year saw Anglo-Australian giant Rio Tinto’s long-delayed launch of mining at the Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold mine in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert.

When the mining operation peaks in 2030, it will be the world’s fourth-biggest source of copper, churning out half a million tonnes a year, according to Rio. That’s enough to meet demands in the making of around 6mn electric vehicles or 60 of the biggest wind farms.