Posts tagged Tavan Tolgoi

Mongolia’s railway dilemma

By Martin Saxer | October 29, 2011

Mongolia faces a dilemma in which direction to build a new rail link to export coal from its Tavan Tolgoi mines – north to Russia or south to China. Now, the Mongolian government announced a middle way to please both sides. The Moscow Times reports:

Mongolia said it plans to synchronize the openings of two export railways to Russia and China to accelerate coal sales from the Tavan Tolgoi mine, one of the world’s biggest unexploited coal deposits.

It may complete the railways as soon as 2014, Yondon Manlaibayar, director general at Mongolia’s Ministry of Roads, Transport, Construction and Urban Development, said in an interview in Hong Kong.

The consortium headed by Russian Railways is one of the finalists in the bid to develop the western section of Tavan Tolgoi.

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Mongolia frets as giant coal mine launch looms – M.A.D

By Martin Saxer | August 11, 2011

Earlier this year, mining rights for the western section of the immense Tavan Tolgoi cole mine in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert were split between a Chinese, a Russian, and a Western consortium. A potential USD 15 billion bid for the mine’s eastern block is scheduled for next year. The well-informed Mongolia-based concultancy M.A.D has published its take on the state of affairs:

At stake is the promise of prosperity for Mongolia’s 2.8 million citizens, many of whom live on the edge of subsistence. The mine’s transformational potential also has implications as a whole for the region, which produces more than half of the world’s steel and aims to wean dependence on primary coking coal supplier Australia. But Mongolians are worried that their two powerful neighbours, China and Russia, will take their resources on the cheap unless key donors Japan and South Korea join the bidding — a point crucial for parliamentary approval later this year.

Which means that the results of the initial bid are anything but final.

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