The Financial Post reports in its Wednesday edition that last summer, bankers working for Zambia's government were close to finalizing a shortlist of buyers for a prized copper mine. A Financial Times of London dispatch says that Mopani, a troubled asset formerly owned by Glencore, had drawn offers worth hundreds of millions of dollars from big names in the mining world eager to gain access to a metal crucial to clean energy technologies of the future. The list had been narrowed to China's Zijin Mining and South Africa's Sibanye Stillwater when seemingly out of nowhere came a third contender: an obscure company from the United Arab Emirates called International Resources Holding (IRH). Behind the scenes, IRH's parent, International Holding Company PJSC, had been courting the highest levels of Zambia's government for nearly two years. The Mopani deal finalized at the end of March marks a new force sweeping through the global mining sector: Gulf nations, hungry to diversify their economies beyond fossil fuels, are redirecting petrodollars to secure copper, nickel and other minerals used in power transmission lines, electric cars and renewable power. Canada's SRG Mining announced in February it would move to the UAE.