On August 24, Resident Representative of Mongolia to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) G. Battungalag held a meeting with the IAEA Director General R.M. Grossi and exchanged views on cooperation.

Resident Representative G. Battungalag expressed gratitude to the IAEA for its support to Mongolia by providing EUR 130 thousand-worth medical equipment such as Mobile X-Ray Unit and 10 RT-PCR kits to test 2000 samples, and involving specialists in international training amid the challenging circumstances posed by the pandemic.

The sides also shared their views on the agenda to be discussed during the 65th Session of the IAEA General Conference and the works that are possible to be further implemented within the framework of bilateral cooperation.

Commending Mongolia’s active participation in the IAEA activities and its successful performance as a chair of the Far East Group and a member of the Board of Governors, Director General R.M.Grossi reaffirmed to pay attention on expanding bilateral cooperation.

Two units of Canada’s Centerra Gold (TSX: CG) have filed a motion in a US Bankruptcy Court seeking penalties of $1 million a day against the Kyrgyzstan government, related to the May seizure of the Canadian company’s Kumtor gold mine.

The company’s Kumtor Gold Company (KGC) and Kumtor Operating Company CJSC (KOC) lodged the motion in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.

The motion alleges the Kyrgyz government “blatantly and continuously” violates the court’s orders and has “continued and intensified” its efforts to deprive KGC and KOC of the protections afforded to them under Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code, much in the same way that it took over the mine.

THE SECURITY SERVICE IS INVESTIGATING POSSIBLE CORRUPTION IN THE DEAL THAT GAVE CENTERRA CONTROL OVER THE COUNTRY’S BIGGEST GOLD MINE

Centerra said in May KGC and KOC commenced bankruptcy proceedings following the nationalization of the miner’s Kumtor gold mine by the former Soviet republic. Also in May, the government seized control of Kyrgyzstan’s most significant foreign investment project in a move challenged by Centerra Gold through international arbitration.

The motion also seeks an order staying the Kyrgyz government’s efforts to dismiss the case.

The motion alleges “continued and willful” violations of the automatic stay afforded by the Bankruptcy Court.

These include continued Kyrgyz court proceedings that seek to change KGC and KOC’s corporate resolutions illegally; the maintenance of the preliminary injunction barring KGC and KOC legal counsel and various individuals from participating in Kyrgyz court proceedings; the extension of the mandate of the so-called temporary manager; the termination of all KGC and KOC contracts with the Kyrgyz government and its related entities; and, laying the groundwork for the conversion of the Kyrgyz government’s environmental and tax claims against the KGC and KOC into equity with the effect of giving the Kyrgyz government complete ownership and control over the KGC and KOC.

Reuters reports the Kyrgyz state security service and prosecutors had said earlier this month they had established enough evidence to press on with removing Centerra from the Kumtor gold mine.

The security service is investigating possible corruption in the deal that gave Centerra control over the country’s biggest gold mine and subsequent amendments to the agreement.

Centerra denies the allegations.

Attorneys for KGC and KOC will present the motion to the Bankruptcy Court hearing to be held on September 15.

Centerra’s CEO, Scott Perry, said earlier this month Centerra remained “financially strong” with solid performance at its other operations three months following the Kyrgyzstan government’s seizure of the Kumtor mine.

At C$9.40 per share, Centerra’s Toronto-quoted shares trading in Toronto are down 43.2% over the past 12 months, capitalizing it at C$2.79 billion ($2.2bn).

After the fall of Kabul, US media regurgitates a 2010 New York Times frontpage story on Afghanistan’s mineral riches based on a secret Pentagon memo and a 1977 Soviet geologic map.

Search for Afghanistan minerals and you get dozens of articles written in the last few days quoting a magical $1 trillion number including gems like The Taliban are sitting on $1 trillion worth of minerals the world desperately needs (CNN), Afghanistan: Taliban to reap $1 trillion mineral wealth (Deutsche Welle), Biden Just Handed Afghanistan’s Mineral Wealth to China (Newsweek), China Eyes Afghanistan’s $1 Trillion of Minerals With Risky Bet on Taliban (Bloomberg) and so on.

All the one trillion dollar articles are derived from a breathless June 2010 New York Times front-page story and interview with General David H Petraeus during which the commander of US forces in Afghanistan referenced a US Dept of Defense “internal memo”.

The story of how “the vast scale of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth was discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists” by the Pulitzer prize-winning journalist James Risen’s opens with a bang (emphasis added):

“The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.”

“​​The previously unknown deposits including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.”

The tale of the $1 trillion treasure trove – which has more than a whiff of Indiana Jones about it as told by the New York Times – begins three years after the US invaded Afghanistan:

“In 2004, American geologists, sent to Afghanistan as part of a broader reconstruction effort, stumbled across an intriguing series of old charts and data at the library of the Afghan [sic] Geological Survey in Kabul that hinted at major mineral deposits in the country.”

“Technoexport”

At first the American geologists only found hints of these huge big veins, but “they soon learned that the data had been collected by Soviet mining experts during the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.”

How soon did the American geologists learn it was a Soviet study? Perhaps when they looked at the author page of the intriguing charts and data and saw this:

Abdullah, Sh., Chmyriov, V.M., Stazhilo-Alekseev, K.F, Dronov, V.I., Gannon, P.J., Lubemov, B.K., Kafarskiy, A.Kh. and Malyarov, E.P., 1977, Mineral resources of Afghanistan (2 ed.) 419 p. and Abdullah, Sh., Chmyriov, V.M. Map of mineral resources of Afghanistan V/O “Technoexport” USSR, scale: 1:500,000.

Contrary to the article, it was two years before the Soviet army invaded (hmm… what did Breshnev know about Afghan minerals and when did he know it?) and it was done under the auspices of the United Nations Development Programme (AFG/74/12).

Details. Let’s not get sidetracked.

Risen, also the recipient of the 2015 Ridenhour Courage Prize, continues:

“Armed with the old Russian charts, the United States Geological Survey began a series of aerial surveys of Afghanistan’s mineral resources in 2006 using advanced gravity and magnetic measuring equipment attached to an old Navy Orion P-3 aircraft that flew over about 70 percent of the country.”

The legend

If you have such advanced tech (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, SRTM, digital elevation model, DEM) why would you need Mineral resources of Afghanistan 2nd ed., and Technoexport?

The reason is printed on the legend of the map the USGS produced after the SRTM DEM survey:

“The geologic and mineral resource information shown on this map is derived from digitization of the original data from Abdullah and Chmyriov (1977) and Abdullah and others (1977).

“The classification of mineral deposit types is based on the authors’ interpretation of existing descriptive information (Abdullah and others, 1977) […] and on limited field investigations by the authors.”

Promising before, astonishing ASTER

“The data from those flights was so promising that in 2007, the geologists returned for an even more sophisticated study” the article continues:

“The handful of American geologists who pored over the new data said the results were astonishing.”

This even more sophisticated study used Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) data from Nasa’s flagship Terra satellite and the astonishing results are summarized in the USGS-Afghanistan Ministry of Mines Joint Mineral Resource Assessment Team Preliminary Assessment of Non-Fuel Mineral Resources of Afghanistan prepared in cooperation with the Afghanistan Geological Survey under the auspices of the US Agency for International Development, October 2007. (Download here)

One can understand that the New York Times would not want to confuse readers with mining jargon but what the paper calls “untapped mineral deposits far beyond any previously known reserves” the USGS report defines as “mean expected values of quantitative probabilistic estimates of undiscovered deposits”.

Close enough, it’s the New York Times.

Abdullah et al

That said, there were some pretty mean expected values gleaned from the ASTER and SRTM DEM non-discoveries and the report (the full 810 page study – Open-File Report 2007–1214 available on 1 CD-ROM and 1 DVD – appears now to be off limits to the public) outlines 34 orebodies across 27 metals and minerals.

However, of the 34 deposits outlined in the three-page summary, only four were newly identified: mercury, potash, asbestos and rare earth.

A further four were revised (upwards).

That is, revised from Abdullah, Sh., Chmyriov and others. Mineral resources of Afghanistan (2 ed.) 1977.

The 26 deposit estimates from the Soviet scientists were simply copied over and “further study recommended”.

Astonished but ignored

At this point in the article Risen injects some tension into the story:

“The results gathered dust for two more years, ignored by officials in both the American and Afghan governments.”

But the story doesn’t end in a dusty library in Kabul or the CD-ROM/DVD storeroom of the USGS:

“In 2009, a Pentagon task force that had created business development programs in Iraq was transferred to Afghanistan, and came upon the geological data.”

“Until then, no one besides the geologists had bothered to look at the information and no one had sought to translate the technical data to measure the potential economic value of the mineral deposits.”

“Soon, the Pentagon business development task force brought in teams of American mining experts to validate the survey’s findings, and then briefed Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Mr. Karzai.”

In these three truly stupefying paragraphs Risen makes it sound that if it was not for the task force coming upon the data after they were transferred (no access to the USGS website from Iraq?) and more importantly, bothered, the world would never have found out about the value of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth.

Send in the Excel cavalry

The only reason the geologists – on who The New York Times heaps so much responsibility to give the article a patina of science – did not bother is because that’s not how mining works.

Not that it’s much of a bother to multiply tonnes and ounces of “probabilistic estimates of undiscovered deposits” with prices.

To the Abdullah et al copper deposits, the USGS report added 32 million contained tonnes (nice!) to bring overall Cu resources in the country to 60 million tonnes. That’s $453 billion right there at the average price for copper of $7,562/tonne in 2010.

Some 600,000 tonnes of cobalt ($27 billion at 2010 prices) and 724,000 tonnes of molybdenum ($18 billion) were also put in the copper basket and the 27 million tonnes of potash would’ve fetched just under $10 billion at 2010’s average price.

Rare earth as seen from space

The global trade in rare earths was before the WTO for arbitration in 2010 and not only were prices volatile (dysprosium went up 12-fold between 2008 and 2011), the 17 elements also trade at very different price points – samarium could be had for $3.40/kg in 2009 but europium would set you back $492/kg that year.

That would have made it more difficult to assign a dollar value to the 1.4 million tonnes of rare earths as seen from space. Although the Pentagon task force probably found a way.

The sulfur tonnage was upwardly adjusted to 5.5 million tonnes, but at a ruling price of some $50 a tonne it doesn’t really smell like money. Neither does the newly non-discovered graphite deposit – not too flaky at 1.05 million tonnes but worth only a billion in 2010.

SRTM DEM and ASTER also zoomed in on 13.4 million tonnes of Afghan asbestos. Asbestos fibre remains a thriving global trade and if you need to get to 12 zeros you can’t just leave it in the ground. At ruling prices of around $1,500 a tonne, that’s $20 billion someone other than the Afghans would have to cough up.

The world in a grain of sand

Only 2.7 tonnes or 86,743 troy ounces of gold were identified in 1977. The USGS recommended further study of the primary gold deposits but did associate 682 tonnes gold ($26.8 billion at the average 2010 gold price of $1,226 per troy ounce) and 9,067 tonnes of silver ($5.9 billion) with the igneous copper deposits.

If the gold non-discoveries seem like an underestimation consider that neither SRTM or ASTER added to the 36 million cubic metres of sand in the Soviet data. Sand is the world’s number one mining endeavour as per Yale School of the Environment and prices have long been on an upward trajectory.

Who knows? The task force probably found more sand, but the Pentagon would’ve realized the jokes write themselves if the New York Times article proclaimed that the US military – ten years into the occupation – discovered vast reserves of sand in Afghanistan.

Don’t be fooled by the rocks that I got

Afghanistan’s endowment of lead, zinc, tin, tungsten, barite, talc, lazurite, fluorite, halite and celestite et cetera were not estimated by the USGS, and since the task force data is secret, only the Pentagon could put a price on those. Whether the task force incorporated the 32,000 tonnes of hot spring mercury in the $1 trillion would also remain a mystery.

Not that those treasures are needed – with iron ore 12 zeroes is more than doable.

The 2007 study did not add rocks to the 2.438 billion tonnes Abdullah et al found thirty years earlier, it didn’t have to – 62% Fe ore was trading at $120 in 2010 putting a price of $292 billion on Afghan steelmaking stuff.

Lithium nirvana

The task force did find ways to warm up the Soviet studies, which likely ignored lithium because commercialisation of the lithium-ion battery only happened more than a decade later. The 2007 USGS report also glossed over the world’s softest metal.

But the Pentagon and the New York Times saw an opportunity to show Afghanistan’s potential in the age of the smart phone and the laptop computer:

“An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.” (Blackberrys… chuckle – Ed.)

And the work was ongoing, according to the article:

“Just this month [June 2010], American geologists working with the Pentagon team have been conducting ground surveys on dry salt lakes in western Afghanistan where they believe there are large deposits of lithium.

“Pentagon officials said that their initial analysis at one location in Ghazni Province showed the potential for lithium deposits as large of [sic] those of Bolivia, which now has the world’s largest known lithium reserves.”

Finding lithium (15th most abundant element, although scarcer than rare earth) in a dry salt lake as large as those of Bolivia which measures 10,000 square kilometres? Maybe the Pentagon team just got lucky.

Besides if you calculate the value of lithium reserves the way the task force did – and how Elon Musk does it – Nevada also has as much of the battery metal as Afghanistan and Bolivia.

Round up to the nearest trillion

The transcript of a Pentagon press briefing a few days later is not accessible due to website maintenance, but contemporaneous reporting suggests the call did not add much besides clarifying that the $1 trillion was actually $908 billion, but then adding that “a lot of people think that is a conservative number”.

Officials also assured reporters that the task force (Task Force for Business and Stability Operations to give its full name which was never mentioned in the article) just used the USGS as a reference point to conduct more “detailed field work” or as The New York Times described it:

“For the geologists who are now scouring some of the most remote stretches of Afghanistan to complete the technical studies necessary before the international bidding process is begun, there is a growing sense that they are in the midst of one of the great discoveries of their careers.”

What the detailed field work and scouring entailed is never stated. And whatever technical studies were completed were never considered in any international bidding process and the “growing sense” of career making discoveries Risen thought he detected among the geologists is, not to put too fine a point on it, growing nonsense.

Scientific boots on the ground

The most well known copper deposit in Afghanistan is Mes Aynak, which translates to “little source of copper” in Pashto/Persian. Copper workings at Mes Aynak date back to the bronze age.

The scientists at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Science magazine in 2014 in an article titled “Mother of all lodes” wrote that after the USGS and the Pentagon “put scientific boots on the ground“ in Afghanistan they found a “vivid panoply of nonferrous mineral formations”.

Of these, Mes Aynak is surely the vividest.

Could Mes Aynak – which did go through a real world tender process – prove that the Pentagon was right all along and $1 trillion – a sum even quoted by the World Bank, responsible for drafting Afghanistan’s mining laws – is on the money?

After a bidding process that included Phelps Dodge (now part of Freeport McMoRan) and Canada’s Hunter Dickinson, state-owned Metallurgical Corporation of China and its minority partner Jiangxi Copper struck a $2.83 billion deal in 2007 for a 30-year lease at Mes Aynak. (Only $997,170,000,000 to go – Ed.)

A stretch

The nine bidders, selected in November 2006, had to rely on a dusty copy of Akocdzhanyan et al., 1974 V/O “Technoexport” Contract 55-184/17500 translated from the Russian.

In the tender information package about Mes Aynak compiled by the Afghanistan and British Geological Survey, the “systematic exploration” of the Soviet Geological Mission “Technoexport” is praised as “exceedingly thorough and well documented”. (Soviet geologist please let us know why it is called Technoexport – Ed.)

The work “included the drilling of several hundred exploration, geotechnical and hydrogeological boreholes, nine underground adits, 70 trenches, and geophysical and topographic surveys.” It was also carried out over 13 years and the geologists only pulled out when the Soviet army did in 1989.

That’s in contrast to the work of “a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists”, who, according to New York Times’ timeline, were busy for only about a year before the article, and were working in the fields of 24 deposits scattered across the entire country.

Whether the task force scouring the “remote stretches” of Afghanistan (Mes Aynak is only 30km (19mi) south of Kabul, btw) also included drillholes, trenches and adits is impossible to say. Rather than attracting international bidders and making careers, the Pentagon technical reports remain buried secrets.

Non-refundable deposit

The Mes Anyak deal was billed as the largest foreign investment in Afghanistan in its modern history.

Perplexingly, this May 2008 press release from Jiangxi Copper put the figure paid to the Afghan government for the mining rights not at $2.83 billion but $808 million, a figure not quoted in any media story.

There were also allegations that the then mines minister Mohammed Ibrahim Adel took some $30 million in bribes related to the tender. (It’s Afghanistan. Don’t get so hung up about missing dollars – Ed.)

The copper project, also the site of an ancient buddhist city, never got off the ground (neither has Hajigak iron ore, the only other deposit which had any prospect of becoming a mine).

MCC blamed the costs of building a smelter, power plant and railway and the steep royalties for halting work. Mention of Mes Aynak disappeared from Jiangxi’s annual reports after 2013 wherein the company blamed the “relocation of historical relics” as the reason for the delay in the project.

Now that the Taliban are in charge that could change – they do not exactly care for Buddhist statues.

Sitting around in pajamas

There was some criticism of the New York Times frontpage story at the time saying that it wasn’t the scoop it was made out to be because of Abdullah and others’ work in the 1970s the 2007 USGS study. Some questioned the timing of the article when the war was going badly in Afghanistan.

Risen was irked by the skepticism telling Yahoo News “bloggers” who are “sitting around in their pajamas” instead of doing real reporting — shouldn’t “deconstruct other people’s stories.” (Go put some pants on – Ed.)

Dean Baquet, who edited the piece and was the Washington bureau chief for the New York Times then (now executive editor) said Risen “is the last person the government would try to get to carry their water,” attributed the criticism to sour grapes for not getting the story first, and that the Pentagon holding a briefing was proof of the article’s newsworthiness.

Task Force for BS Ops

The Task Force for Business and Stability Operations (Task Force for BS Ops) also came under scrutiny – albeit only in 2016 – in a 136 page report by the RAND Corporation titled Lessons from the Task Force for Business and Stability Operations in Afghanistan.

To their credit (and I don’t know how much credit, I only know that the US military, air force and Secretary of Defense stuffed $147.1 million in RAND’s coffers in 2020) RAND said the $908 billion “is notional only; it does not reflect the value of commercially exploitable deposits. Therefore, it is misleading.” (p.22)

It also fell to the think tank to address the biggest elephant in the room full of elephants that was the New York Times story and Pentagon briefing:

“Challenges impede the extraction of this natural wealth. Security concerns aside, most of the mineral rich provinces lack road, rail, or electric power infrastructure, and the nascent mining industry would have to compete with agriculture, an economic mainstay, and municipalities for limited water supplies.”

Let x = x

The manner in which the task force and its teams of mining experts calculated (tonnes x price = x,xxx,xxx,xxx,xxx) the $1 trillion value – or $3 trillion as successive mines & petroleum ministers, and President Karzai was fond of quoting – is not the biggest problem with the New York Times story.

While the number has no real world meaning, it certainly attracts attention – by the paper’s own reporting it led to greater violence in Afghanistan.

To focus only on non-fuel resources in the article also smacks of marketing. Afghanistan also has vast oil and reserves but “No war for oil” protesters had grown in ranks seven years into the Iraq occupation and trotting out a crude message would likely have misfired.

$34,482.76

That all US and most international media outlets continue to parrot the $1 trillion tale a decade later also makes its propaganda value clear.

How easily the Western armchair media swallowed the story is inexcusable, but the way Afghans were duped into believing in their country’s mineral wealth seems cruel.

The New York Times followed up the big scoop a few days later with a piece headlined Afghan Officials Elated by Minerals Report:

“As they waited to hear Mr. Karzai’s spokesman, some Afghan reporters excitedly calculated among themselves how much each Afghan would theoretically get if the mineral treasure trove were divided equally.

“Assuming the $1 trillion valuation and Afghanistan’s population of 29 million, that would give each Afghan man, woman and child $34,482.76.”

If not in scope then in tenor, U.S. Identifies Vast Mineral Riches in Afghanistan was not dissimilar to the paper’s weapons of mass destruction coverage of a few years earlier.

At least the New York Times has taken some responsibility for boosting the case for the Iraq invasion.

But there’s been no such soul searching by the paper for cheerleading the extension of the US occupation of Afghanistan.

China's Tibet Autonomous Region is celebrating the 70th anniversary of peaceful liberation -- a turning point in the region's history -- as it starts a new journey of modernization after decades of leapfrog development.

With the peaceful liberation in 1951, the people of Tibet broke free from the fetters of invading imperialism for good, and embarked on a bright road of unity, progress and development.

In late July, Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, Chinese president and chairman of the Central Military Commission, visited the region to extend congratulations on the occasion, the first time in the history of the Party and the country.

"It has been proved that without the CPC, there would have been neither New China nor new Tibet," Xi said during the visit. "The CPC Central Committee's guidelines and policies concerning Tibet work are completely correct."

Decorations for the Spring Festival and the Tibetan New Year are seen in front of the Potala Palace in Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, Feb. 8, 2021. (Xinhua/Chogo)

Thubten Gyaltsen, 81, clearly remembers his miserable days in old Tibet and has witnessed the great transformation of the region.

"My parents were serfs and we could barely fill our stomach," he said.

In old Tibet, the three major stakeholders -- officials, aristocrats and higher-ranking lamas -- and their agents, made up about 5 percent of the population but owned almost all of the land and most of the livestock. Serfs and slaves had no means of production or freedom of their own and were subjected to exploitation and oppression.

In 1959, democratic reform was launched and feudal serfdom was finally abolished in Tibet. A million serfs and slaves were emancipated.

Now, Thubten Gyaltsen and his family live in a two-story house with 13 rooms and a garage in the city of Xigaze. Five in his family of six enjoy wages or pension.

"Our lives couldn't be happier, and we are experiencing a totally different world compared with the old days," Thubten Gyaltsen said.

Over the past 70 years, the central government has introduced many favorable policies for the region, covering tax and finance, infrastructure, industrial development, education, health, cultural preservation and environmental protection.

Since 1978, the CPC Central Committee has held seven national meetings on Tibet to adopt major decisions and plans for the region.

"We must make improving people's livelihoods and rallying public support the starting points and ultimate goals for economic and social development," said Xi at the seventh Central Symposium on Tibet Work in August 2020.

In 2020, the regional GDP exceeded 190 billion yuan (about 29.3 billion U.S. dollars). The per capita disposable income of rural residents in the region was 14,598 yuan, representing double-digit growth for the past 18 years, while that of urban residents came in at 41,156 yuan.

By the end of 2019, all registered poor residents in Tibet had shaken off poverty, marking the elimination of absolute poverty in the region for the first time in history.

In just a few decades, the CPC has united and led the people of all ethnic groups in Tibet to make unprecedented historical achievements. Tibet has progressed "from darkness to light, from backwardness to progress, from poverty to prosperity, from autocracy to democracy, from closure to opening up," said an editorial on Tibet slated to be published on the People's Daily on Thursday.

The social system in Tibet has achieved a historic leap, the economy and society have made all-round development, people's lives have been greatly improved, and the urban and rural areas are not what they used to be, the article added.

Efforts must be made to build a new, modern, socialist Tibet that is united, prosperous, culturally advanced, harmonious, and beautiful, Xi has said.

In the new era, under the strong leadership of the CPC Central Committee with Xi at the core and with the vigorous support of the whole country, Tibet has eradicated absolute poverty and achieved moderate prosperity in all aspects. People in the region enjoy a stable social environment, economic and cultural prosperity, a sound eco-environment, and lead better lives.

Tibet has also been increasing the level of specialization in production and boosting production efficiency. The comprehensive mechanization rate for growing staple crops has reached 65 percent. The region has established a comprehensive transport network of highways, railways, air routes and pipelines.

Stretching 1,956 km from Xining, capital of Qinghai Province, to Tibet's regional capital Lhasa, the Qinghai-Tibet Railway linking Tibet with the rest of the country opened in 2006. The Lhasa-Nyingchi railway, the region's first electrified railway, started official operation in June this year, with advanced Fuxing bullet trains running on it.

From 1951 to 2020, the central government invested 224 billion yuan in Tibet's education sector. The region now has a modern educational system that includes preschool, primary and middle schools, higher education institutions, as well as vocational and technical schools.

During his inspection tour in Tibet last month, Xi said people of all ethnic groups had jointly contributed to the development of Tibet and written the history of Tibet.

The continuous pairing-up support programs in Tibet from the rest of the country have facilitated Tibet's new industrialization, IT application, urbanization and agricultural modernization over the past few decades.

Zhang Honglin, who works with a leading egg producer in central China's Hubei Province, is playing his role in promoting agricultural modernization in Tibet. Last year, he set up a large egg production company in Shannan City of the region.

Zhang said that his company has brought advanced technology, equipment, management methods and experience to help the industry become competitive and maintain high-quality development. "We have also made many improvements based on Tibet's special plateau climate environment."

"Practice has fully proved that Tibet can enjoy a prosperous present and a bright future only by unswervingly upholding CPC leadership, socialism with Chinese characteristics, and the system of regional ethnic autonomy," said Zhuang Yan, deputy Party chief of the autonomous region. Enditem

The national committee on balanced urban and rural development and congestion and traffic issues, chaired by Prime Minister L.Oyun-Erdene, held its first meeting.

At the meeting, the committee’s secretary B.Odsuren presented the integrated program to solve congestion in Ulaanbaatar. He said, “In Ulaanbaatar, speed at capacity, which is 20-23 km/h in large cities around the world during peak hours, is 8 km/h. In other words, Ulaanbaatar has become one of the world’s most congested cities. It has become crucial to expand the road network, upgrade public transport, and make urban planning and legal changes,”

Roads in Ulaanbaatar have the capacity to carry 350 thousand vehicles. Expansion of the road network will allow the capacity to go to around 600 thousand. Many more underpasses are necessary for that, said the committee secretary. The number of public transport users has decreased from 60 percent to 40 percent in five years. It is estimated that 300 thousand vehicles will be imported over the next three years, which led the working group to conclude that traffic congestion cannot be reduced without a decrease in the number of vehicles. Officials also said the traffic issue cannot be solved without developing satellite cities in phases and easing congestion.

Following the working group’s report, Prime Minister L.Oyun-Erdene said, “The traffic problem has gone out of the hands of the Ministry of Road and Transport Development. There are around 500 thousand vehicles in Ulaanbaatar, which means the road network’s capacity has been exceeded by 150 thousand vehicles. The number of vehicles purchased per year is around 80-90 thousand,” instructing the working group to look into and report back on a number of matters including possibilities to partner with the private sector in public transport management, what solutions can be made to adopt a strategy for cycling and walking, and ways and possibilities to support traffic congestion initiatives as well as colleges and universities that decide to relocate out of the city and impose restrictions on the import of right-hand drive vehicles.

Mining is nothing new in Mongolia, but it was not until the 1990s, and the transition of the country to a free-market democracy, that the industry was opened up to foreign investment.

The famous Oyu Tolgoi property in the country, operated by London-listed major Rio Tinto (LON:RIO), is one of the largest copper and gold mines in the world, in which the Mongolian government also owns a 34% stake. Also, the Mongolian economy is growing rapidly and the government knows that mining is key to sustaining growth. The country's mineral riches are valued at between US$1 trillion and US$3 trillion across coal, copper and gold.

Against this backdrop, Steppe Gold Ltd (TSE:STGO) (OTCMKTS:STPGF) (FRA:2J9) began producing gold at its flagship Altan Tsaagan Ovoo (ATO) mine in the country in March 2020.

The ATO mine was built in just 14 months with less than US$20 million of capex and is now ramping up output. The firm is now bidding to expand production via a Phase 2 sulphide project, which will see it mine fresh rock ores to generate 150,000 ounces equivalent a year from 2023.

Steppe also has the Mungu gold and silver project, which lies northeast of the current resource at ATO and is a structurally controlled epithermal gold-silver system with localized bonanza grades. In addition, it holds the Uudam Khundii (UK) gold project, which is an 80:20 joint venture between Steppe and the Bayankhongor provincial government.

How is it doing:

In August 2021, Steppe said the first six months of the year had been busy, following several coronavirus (COVID-19) related supply chain challenges in 2020.

It said it plans to have a newly installed fixed crushing unit operational by October this year at the flagship ATO Gold mine, which is expected to have a capacity of 1,000 tonnes per hour (t/hr), which is more than three times the current crusher capacity. The company ceased leaching (but continued stacking) at ATO in early July this year due to issues surrounding cyanide supply.

To date, there is 1.6 million tonnes stacked on the leach pad and a further 450,000 tonnes on the ROM pad, adding to Steppe’s "strong gold and silver inventory build-up through the year."

Gold production in the three months to June 30, 2021 came in at 7,202 ounces (oz) and 762 ounces silver. Despite output being lower than projected, Steppe had said it was confident that with reagent supply resumed it will still finish the year strongly.

Steppe revealed that the Definitive Feasibility Study for the fresh rock expansion was nearing completion and Steppe expects to release headline numbers in the upcoming weeks with the final report to be filed shortly thereafter.

And in February this year, Steppe hit a key milestone at its ATO operation, with the release of an updated resource estimate that nearly doubled the ounces in the deposit. The measured and indicated (M&I) resources increased to 41.6 million tonnes, or 2.2 million ounces, at an average grade of 1.7 grams per tonne (g/t) gold equivalent ounces – 1.4 million gold ounces and 20.5 million silver ounces.

That doubled the amount of resources represented at the ATO Gold Mine to 2.45 million ounces of gold equivalent, up from 1.2 million ounces in the previous resource statement.

According to the company, the increase in the M&I resource was due primarily to significant expansion through drilling at the ATO 4 Deposit and incorporation of a maiden resource at the Mungu deposit. The ATO 4 Deposit, where mining recently started, shows an M&I resource of 15.7 million tons at 1.6 g/t for a total of 819,000 gold equivalent ounces, while the maiden resource at the Mungu discovery shows an M&I resource of 7.6 million tonnes at 1.7 g/t for 424,000 gold equivalent ounces.

In July this year, Steppe Gold said it received permission to cross-list on the Mongolian Stock Exchange in a move that will allow more Mongolian investors to trade in its shares.

Following the approval by the Financial Regulatory Commission of Mongolia, the gold mining company said it planned to raise 5 billion Mongolian tögrög (C$2.2 million). Proceeds of the placement will be used for the Phase 2 expansion of its flagship ATO gold mine, it said.

Inflection points:

New crusher in place

Completion of bankable feasibility and project financing for expansion at ATO

Uplift in output from ATO

What the broker says:

In August, Stifel GMP repeated a 'Buy' recommendation on Mongolia-focused producer Steppe Gold Limited (TSX:STGO, OTCQX:STPGF) following the miner's second-quarter results.

Analysts at the brokerage said they were looking forward to the results of the second phase feasibility study into expanding the group's flagship producing ATO project and the restart of leaching there. They also noted that the first results from exploration drilling at the company's Uudam Khundii (UK) property are ahead.

Gold production in the three months to June 30, 2021 came in at 7,202 ounces (oz) and 762 ounces silver, which was below Stifel's estimates for 9,700 oz gold and 4,100 oz of silver. The broker added it had "tempered" its near-term production expectations for the ATO mine to 14,000 oz gold for 2021 and 25,000 oz for 2022.

"The company has indicated that the Feasibility Study for the fresh rock expansion at ATO is nearly finished and is set to release key highlights in the coming weeks," analysts added.

"We have adjusted our model following discussions with management and have increased our initial capex to $125m, adjusted our throughput rate to 6,200 tpd (from 6,800 tpd) and increased our operating unit cost by 12% to $53/t processed," they said of the expansion project.

"This puts our model for the sulphides at 110koz/yr with a total cash cost of $1,125/oz (GEO basis). We have also pushed out the anticipated start of commercial production to Q4, 2023 given the ongoing logistical issues," they added.

Stifel repeated a 'Buy' on the stock but reduced the target price to C$2 a share (from C$3.70 previously) as a result of the broker's reduced net asset value (NAV).

What the boss says:

"While we are glad to report zero COVID cases at our mine site and uninterrupted mining activities through the first half of 2021, the pandemic continues to cause delays in our supply chain," said CEO of Steppe Gold, Bataa Tumur-Ochir in a corporate update on August 10, 2021.

"These issues are impacting most operating mining companies in Mongolia but we are optimistic that the China border issues will be resolved soon and we are working on contingency planning for further delays.

"On a positive note, our mining and stacking has continued at or near planned rates and grade reconciliation remains above budget. We now have over 2mm tonnes mined or around 50% of the planned leach pad tonnage, with approximately 34,000 oz of gold in inventory. Together with net cash of approximately $10m, this provides strong support to our liquidity position and our balance sheet," he added.

"We are also very excited to shortly announce the definitive feasibility study for our fresh rock expansion, following on from the very strong resource update released earlier this year. With heap leach production back on track soon, a new crusher to ramp up the stacking rate, and a positive new study for our fresh rock phase, we are very excited for the future."

The Ministry of Health today, August 25, has reported that 2,433 new coronavirus cases were detected in the past 24 hours after tests were carried out at PCR laboratories across the country.

In specific, 850 new cases were confirmed in Ulaanbaatar city with 1,552 cases in rural regions and 31 imported cases. As a result, the nationwide infection tally is now 193,279. The Ministry also reported six COVID-19 related deaths, raising the country's death toll to 913.

Of a total of 11,592 patients currently undergoing treatment at hospitals, there are 6,772 patients in mild, 3,686 in serious, 947 in critical, and 187 in very critical conditions.

As of today, August 25, a total of 2,067,391 people have received the second dose of vaccines against COVID-19, equal to 63.5 percent of the total population of Mongolia.

As the prevalence of the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant is rising sharply across the country, the Ministry of Health urges elders, unvaccinated people, and people with chronic disease as well as children under 12 to stay at home.

In the world’s high mountain regions, life needs ice. From the Rockies to the Himalayas, glaciers and other accumulations of snow and ice persist throughout the year. Often found on shaded slopes protected from the sun, these ice patches transform barren peaks into biological hot spots.

As an archaeologist, I value these snow and ice patches for the rare peek they can provide back in time through the fog of alpine prehistory. When people lose objects in the ice, ice patches act as natural deep-freezers. For thousands of years, they can store snapshots of the culture, daily life, technology and behavior of the people who created these artifacts.

Frozen heritage is melting from mountain ice in every hemisphere. As it does so, small groups of archaeologists are scrambling to cobble together the funding and staffing needed to identify, recover and study these objects before they are gone.

Alongside a group of scholars from the University of Colorado, the National Museum of Mongolia and partners from around the world, I’m working to identify, analyze and preserve ancient materials emerging from the ice in the grassy steppes of Mongolia, where such discoveries have a tremendous impact on how scientists understand the past.

Life at the ice’s edge

During the warm summer months, unique plants thrive at the well-watered margins of ice patches. Large animals such as caribou, elk, sheep and even bison seek the ice to cool off or escape from insects.

Because ice patches are predictable sources of these plants and animals, as well as fresh water, they are important to the subsistence of nearby people nearly everywhere they’re found. In the dry steppes of Mongolia, meltwater from mountain ice feeds summer pastures, and domestic reindeer seek out the ice in much the same way as their wild counterparts. Climate warming aside, ice margins act as magnets for people — and repositories of the materials they leave behind.

It’s not just their biological and cultural significance that makes ice patches important tools for understanding the past. The tangible objects made and used by early hunters or herders in many mountainous regions were constructed from soft, organic materials. These fragile objects rarely survive erosion, weather and exposure to the severe elements that are common in alpine areas. If discarded or lost in the ice, though, items that would otherwise degrade can be preserved for centuries in deep-freeze conditions.

But high mountains experience extreme weather and are often far from urban centers where modern researchers are concentrated. For these reasons, significant contributions by mountain residents to the human story are sometimes left out of the archaeological record.

For example, in Mongolia, the high mountains of the Altai hosted the region’s oldest pastoral societies. But these cultures are known only through a small handful of burials and the ruins of a few windswept stone buildings.

More

artifacts are melting out of the ice

One of our discoveries was a finely woven piece of animal hair rope from a melting mountaintop ice patch in western Mongolia. On survey, we spotted it lying among the rocks exposed at the edge of the retreating ice. The artifact, which may have been part of a bridle or harness, appeared as though it might have been dropped in the ice the just day before — our guides even recognized the technique of traditional manufacture. However, scientific radiocarbon dating revealed that the artifact is actually more than 1,500 years old.

Objects like these provide rare clues about daily life among the ancient herders of western Mongolia. Their excellent preservation allows us to perform advanced analyses back in the lab to reconstruct the materials and choices of the early herding cultures that eventually gave rise to pan-Eurasian empires like the Xiongnu and the Great Mongol Empire.

For example, scanning electron microscopy allowed to us to pinpoint that camel hair was chosen as a fiber for making this rope bridle, while collagen preserved within ancient sinew revealed that deer tissue was used to haft a Bronze Age arrowhead to its shaft.

Sometimes, the objects that emerge end up overturning some of archaeologists’ most basic assumptions about the past. People in the region have long been classified as herding societies, but my colleagues and I found that Mongolian glaciers and ice patches also contained hunting artifacts, like spears and arrows, and skeletal remains of big game animals like argali sheep spanning a period of more than three millennia. These finds demonstrate that big game hunting on mountain ice has been an essential part of pastoral subsistence and culture in the Altai Mountains for thousands of years.

But the clock is ticking. The summer of 2021 is shaping up to be one of the hottest ever recorded, as scorching summer temperatures fry the rainforests of the Pacific Northwest and wildfires ravage the Siberian Arctic. The impact of escalating temperatures is particularly severe in the world’s cold regions.

In the area my colleagues and I study in western Mongolia, satellite photos show that more than 40% of the surface cover of ice has been lost over the past three decades. After each artifact is exposed by the melting ice, it may have only a limited window of time for recovery by scientists before it is damaged, degraded or lost because of the combination of freezing, thawing, weather and glacial activity that can affect previously frozen artifacts.

Because of the scale of modern climate change, it’s difficult to quantify how much material is being lost. Many of the high mountains of Central and South Asia have never been systematically surveyed for melting artifacts. In addition, many international projects have been unable to proceed since summer 2019 because of the COVID-19 pandemic — which has also prompted reductions, pay cuts and even complete closures of archaeology departments at leading universities.

Revealed by warming, providing climate clues

Ice patch artifacts are irreplaceable scientific datasets that can also help researchers characterize ancient responses to climate change and understand how modern warming may affect today’s world.

In addition to human-made artifacts left behind in the snow, ice patches also preserve “ecofacts” — natural materials that trace important ecological changes, like shifting tree lines or changing animal habitats. By collecting and interpreting these datasets along with artifacts from the ice, scientists can gather insights into how people adapted to significant ecological changes in the past, and maybe expand the toolkit for facing the 21st-century climate crisis.

Meanwhile, the plant, animal and human communities that depend on dwindling ice patches are also imperiled. In northern Mongolia, my work shows that summer ice loss is harming the health of domestic reindeer. Local herders worry about the impact of ice loss on pasture viability. Melting ice also converges with other environmental changes: In western Mongolia, animal populations have dramatically dwindled because of poaching and poorly regulated tourism hunting.

As soaring heat exposes artifacts that provide insights into ancient climate resilience and other important scientific data, the ice loss itself is reducing humanity’s resilience for the years ahead.

Rio Tinto and Sumitomo Corporation announced on Tuesday they will jointly study the construction of a hydrogen pilot plant at Rio’s Yarwun alumina refinery in Gladstone, Australia.

Sumitomo had already been carrying out studies into building a hydrogen plant but hadn’t chosen a location. Rio, in turn, recently started a feasibility study into replacing natural gas with hydrogen in the alumina refining process.

If the partners choose to proceed, the pilot plant would produce hydrogen for the Japanese miner’s Gladstone Hydrogen Ecosystem project, announced in March, which is also located in Queensland’s Gladstone, a traditional coal and gas hub.

Green hydrogen — produced by stripping the gas from water using electrolyzers powered by wind and solar — is seen as key to eliminating carbon emissions from the industrial sector.

Most Australian mines are already transitioning to renewable power and either turning to or expanding their electric vehicles fleets. Hydrogen is the next frontier.

“Reducing the carbon intensity of our alumina production will be key to meeting our 2030 and 2050 climate targets,” Rio Tinto Australia chief executive Kellie Parker said in the statement. “There is clearly more work to be done, but partnerships and projects like this are an important part of helping us get there.”

Energy hungry regions, particularly north-east Asia and Europe, lack the natural resources to generate large scale clean energy. This is particularly true in Japan, where nuclear energy has become politically and practically toxic.

The answer, as the country has very publicly committed to, is to transition to 100% green ammonia, which is the demand the growing number of large-scale green hydrogen projects in Australia are looking to meet.

The first meeting of the National Committee in charge of stimulating the economy amid the pandemic, increasing export, promoting import-substitute national manufacturing, strengthening public-private partnership and increasing investment took place in August 24.

The committee is chaired by Prime Minister of Mongolia L.Oyun-Erdene. At the beginning of the meeting the Prime Minister said, “Stimulating the post-pandemic economy is not an easy task. Thus, there is a necessity to quickly carry out works. The government has been mainly focusing on acquiring COVID-19 vaccines, launching immunization works, reopening the economy in phases, and keeping jobs within the first 100 days after the new government’s formation. By the 200th day of its formation, we were able to immunize 60 percent of the country’s population. We also fulfilled the objective to reopen the economy, allowing normal operations. In order to stimulate our economy, a National Committee has been established with the participation of representatives from each sector. With the establishment of this committee, a bill on economic recovery during the pandemic will be drafted.”

Representatives of public and private sector put forth suggestions for measures to be taken on recovering the economy. In particular, President of the Mongolian National Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MNCCI) O.Amartuvshin has submitted suggestions and proposals received from entities in the private sector to the working group in charge of developing the bill.

During the meeting, Director-General of Erdenet Mining Corporation (EMC) state-owned enterprise highlighted that the corporation has had a sales revenue of MNT 2.2 trillion this year. “We have developed plans for the current pandemic situation as well as for the post-pandemic condition. By enhancing management, it is estimated that our mining corporation will earn MNT 5.8 trillion in income by 2024, reaching MNT 12 trillion by 2028. We plan to increase export by USD 150 million in 2024 by further developing our current structure and organization,” said the EMC Director-General.

Following the comments of the members of the National Committee, the Prime Minister gave a number of instructions. More specifically, the Committee will be setting up a working group to develop a quarterly plan to overcome the pandemic economy, draft a bill regarding the matter, and receive suggestions from foreign investors and the private sector.