The Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources opened on Saturday the first workshop under the theme “Use of geographical system to locate mineral places.” The week-long workshop is held in collaboration with the Arabic Association for Industrial and Mining Development. “Our world had became too complex and full of information and knowledge, and it even change rapidly where the information system also change. The geographical information system now becomes very important, that's why such workshop is needed in order to improve the geographical information system in which we present the subject in the Arabic language for the first time,” Siad Sultan Al-Shawli, an official of the Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources. He said the mineral resources investment in the Kingdom had increased in 2007 where around 1,314 licenses were issued across the Kingdom's regions that are reserved for minerals investment covering around 44,000 kilometers and about 320 million tons were extracted. The investors' incomes during 2007 were about SR14 billion and the Kingdom had exported around 3 million tons of minerals, added Al-Shawli. He furtehr said new projects would be launched under collobarative efforts. __
