Rio’s Mongolia mine clears major hurdle #OT

Looks like Oyu Tolgoi is finally ready to star producing!

Rio's Mongolia mine clears major hurdle
Financial Times, 8:32am Monday November 5th, 2012--
By Leslie Hook in Tianjin
--
Rio Tinto's $5bn Mongolian copper-gold mine Oyu Tolgoi is set to start producing after finally sealing a deal with China for power supply

Read the full article at: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ce52b3ec-270b-11e2-abcb-00144feabdc0.html

Mongolia, the next commodity powerhouse (?)

Mongolia is going to be a major future supplier of commodities from coal through gold to copper – and maybe even crude oil. But how soon will this landlocked country with a population of 3m really begin delivering these resources to the world in a significant, market-moving way?

While at first Mongolia seemed to be the poster child for liberalization, in the last several years that has changed as the population has demanded a larger share of the resource bonanza to come - Ivanhoe Mines and Rio Tinto's Copper-Gold behemoth, Oyu Tolgoi, being the headline project. While justifiable to a certain degree, in reality it has meant many of the mining projects on the drawing board have been delayed. The China issue remains a particularly prickly subject, as the FT notes in the article below,

Although Mongolia is located right next to its biggest customer, China, their history of rivalry makes Mongolia suspicious of its southern neighbour. And capricious politics – parliament has tried to oust Dashdorj Zorigt, minister for mineral resources and energy, twice this year – mean that economic logic is sometimes subordinate to politics or nationalism.