State-Owned Company Wins Mining Licenses

Thursday, June 05, 2008.
State-owned company ‘Erdenes MGL’ can mine the lucrative Asgat silver deposits in the Nogoonnuur soum, Bayan-Olgii aimag, according to a decision granting special permission made by the Mineral Resources and Petroleum Authority of Mongolia (MRPAM).
Erdenes MGL also secured the exploitation licenses to the strategic mining deposits at Tavan Tolgoi, located in the Omnogobi aimag, which the MRPAM transferred from Energy Resources who formerly owned the licenses.
The MRPAM made the decision to transfer the license under the argument that the state had paid for initial exploration.


In order to grant special permission to Asgat, the MRPAM used the following articles of law: Resolution No.27, Article No.4, passed on February 6 2007 by parliament; Resolution No.266, passed by the Government of Mongolia on November 15, 2006; and Resolutions No. 42 and No.63 by the chairperson of MRPAM, approved on February 11 and 28, 2008.
The Asgat deposit is located in Bayan-Olgii aimag, in the extreme northwest of Mongolia, 170 km north of the aimag administrative center 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.