ASIA
21 %
Proportion of Mongolian GDP generated by mining companies are turned on by at a time when there is a scarcity of new resources on the one hand while on the other global economic uncertainties are encouraging investors to take refuge in gold .
Kharmagtai , with a 30-year mining licence and a registered water resource , is the most active currently , and he estimates that it will take another year to define .
The deposit starts at the surface , giving the opportunity for early production upside from an open pit , but in the longer term there is a great deal more value deeper down . Xanadu ’ s local drilling contractor Litho Resources has already gone down 650 metres , with some excellent intercepts , but by mid-2018 he expects it to reach as far as a kilometre below ground . Eventually Kharmagtai could rival or surpass Oyu Tolgoi , he believes .
“ Kharmagtai is a big deposit and getting bigger ,” he explains . “ We are getting a lot of interest from strategic investors . With the shortage of genuine discoveries out there the majors are on the hunt for new assets . Xanadu is very much an exploration company and our job is to provide those assets for the future .”
A second project on the South Gobi porphyry belt , Oyut Ulaan ( Red Mountain ), is close to Kharmagtai , and here the emphasis is on gold rather than copper . It is at an earlier stage of
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