Recent news
More Chinese iron ore mines seen shutting in 2015
About a third of China’s iron ore mines have halted production and this could rise as high as 45 per cent by the end of the year if the price of the steelmaking raw material stays below $70 a tonne.
XAMODX awarded Mongolia’s first Fairmined Certificate
The NGO XAMODX is the first Mongolian organization, only the fourth in the world, and the only one outside South America to have been awarded the Fairmined Certification by the Alliance for Responsible Mining recognizing that the gold it produces is without the use of mercury or cyanide.
Concern over how Mongolian plans pose threat to Baikal
Lake Baikal is facing another environmental threat, this time from across the border with plans in Mongolia for a series of new hydroelectric power plants. Campaigners including Greenpeace have made a plea to the World Bank to block funding for the major projects, which will see the plants built on tributary rivers leading to Baikal. Among the proposals is one to dam a river and divert water to the Gobi desert.
Mongolia offers more land for mining to raise cash
Mongolia is hoping to drum up more foreign investor interest in its flagging mining industry after opening up an additional 10.1 million hectares of territory for mining exploration. The country, estimated to possess $1.5 trillion worth of mineral resources like gold, copper and iron ore, started the application process for exploration licences on Jan. 26.
Drilling at Erdene Resource’s Altan Nar yields significant results
Erdene Resource Development says drilling results for the first four holes of the 15-hole Q4 2014 exploration programme at its wholly-owned Altan Nar gold-polymetallic project show significant increase in width and grade at the northern edge of Discovery Zone South (DZS).
The iniquities of inequality
One reason why the Right – do mark the capital R, for this significant and substantial section of the world’s population is often enough not right – was so upset by Thomas Piketty’s book last year is that it showed so cogently that inequality is not inevitable, it is engineered.
Choosing fees over dividends
The Government has now started acting seriously to resolve differences over how to finance development of the second stage of the Oyu Tolgoi project, which is its underground mine.
Gazprom cuts gas purchases from Central Asia
Russia’s Gazprom plans to reduce the volume of gas purchases from Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan by nearly 10 billion cubic meters and replace these volumes with its own gas in 2015.
