The Mineral Resources and Petroleum Authority of Mongolia (MRPAM) has granted special permission to a state-owned company, ‘Erdenes MGL’, to mine the lucrative Asgat silver deposits at Nogoonnuur soum in the Bayan-Olgii aimag.
The company has also secured exploitation licenses for the strategic mining deposits at Tavan Tolgoi, located in the Omnogobi aimag, which the MRPAM has transferred from Energy Resources, the former owner of the licences. MRPAM argued that as the state had paid for initial exploration it was within its rights to transfer the licences.
The Asgat deposit is located in Bayan-Olgii aimag, in the extreme northwest of Mongolia, 170 km north of the aimag administrative centre of Olgii. The deposit was discovered in 1976 in a mountainous area where maximum altitudes range from 2,300 to 3,650m above sea level.
It is estimated the resources of rare earth metals, which reach to a depth of 200m, are 600,000 metric tons of niobium oxides, 35,000 metric tons of tantalum oxides, 4,000,000 metric tons of zirconium oxides, 1,000,000 metric tons of rare earth oxides, and more than 100,000 metric tons of yttrium oxides.
It is also highly probable that zircon-pyrochlore placers may have formed near the rare earth metal bearing granites.
The overall coal reserves of the Tavantolgoi deposit alone are estimated to be 5 billion tons, of which 2.8 billion tons are amenable to open pit mining to a depth of 340m.
Source: UB Post, Ulaanbaatar
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