OYU TOLGOI NAMED ONE OF ’10 BEAUTIFUL PLACES WE COULD DESTROY WITH HUMAN DRILLING’
The widely read Huffington Post in one of its characteristically breathless pieces on the environment on Tuesday calls out Vancouver-based Ivanhoe Mines’ Oyu Tolgoi project.
In an article by one Michael Klare titled “10 Beautiful Places We Could Destroy With Human Drilling” the massive Mongolian copper, silver and gold project – alongside mining projects in Alaska, Africa, the Arctic and Bolivia – is named as one of the worst potential blights on the planet:
Until very recently, most Mongolians were nomadic herders and the landscape – consisting of rolling steppes and desert – was largely untouched by human interference. Now all that is about to change. Since it became a multi-party democracy in 1990, Mongolia has been criss-crossed by mining firms seeking promising ore deposits and one such site, at Oyu Tolgoi (Turquoise Hill) in the southern Gobi desert, is soon to be mined for copper. Environmentalists worry that development of Oyu Tolgoi will threaten the livelihood of traditional Mongolian herders and produce enormous pollution.
Missing from the Huffpo piece, naturally, is that the 75%-complete project, will help turn Mongolia, one of the poorest countries in the world, into the world’s fastest-growing economy with staggering economic growth of 35%.
Oyu Tolgoi is forecast to contribute a third of the country’s GDP when it goes into full operation and increase the average earnings of Mongolians by 60%. The Mongolian government owns 33% of the project.
The mine in the South Gobi desert is on track to produce more than 1.2 billion pounds of copper and 650,000 ounces of gold each year with a mine life measured in generations not decades.
Mongolia’s land mass is three times the size of France and the country of fewer than 3 million citizens is one of the most sparsely populated places on earth.
With only 5 inhabitants per square mile only Greenland and Western Sahara has fewer people than Mongolia.
Frik Els
In an article by one Michael Klare titled “10 Beautiful Places We Could Destroy With Human Drilling” the massive Mongolian copper, silver and gold project – alongside mining projects in Alaska, Africa, the Arctic and Bolivia – is named as one of the worst potential blights on the planet:
Until very recently, most Mongolians were nomadic herders and the landscape – consisting of rolling steppes and desert – was largely untouched by human interference. Now all that is about to change. Since it became a multi-party democracy in 1990, Mongolia has been criss-crossed by mining firms seeking promising ore deposits and one such site, at Oyu Tolgoi (Turquoise Hill) in the southern Gobi desert, is soon to be mined for copper. Environmentalists worry that development of Oyu Tolgoi will threaten the livelihood of traditional Mongolian herders and produce enormous pollution.
Missing from the Huffpo piece, naturally, is that the 75%-complete project, will help turn Mongolia, one of the poorest countries in the world, into the world’s fastest-growing economy with staggering economic growth of 35%.
Oyu Tolgoi is forecast to contribute a third of the country’s GDP when it goes into full operation and increase the average earnings of Mongolians by 60%. The Mongolian government owns 33% of the project.
The mine in the South Gobi desert is on track to produce more than 1.2 billion pounds of copper and 650,000 ounces of gold each year with a mine life measured in generations not decades.
Mongolia’s land mass is three times the size of France and the country of fewer than 3 million citizens is one of the most sparsely populated places on earth.
With only 5 inhabitants per square mile only Greenland and Western Sahara has fewer people than Mongolia.
Frik Els
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