Partner

Rio Tinto expects funds for Oyu Tolgoi expansion lined up by Dec

Lesedauer: min

Reuters reported that financing to expand the USD 13 billion Oyu Tolgoi copper mine in Mongolia is likely to be locked in by the end of the year.

Investment in Oyu Tolgoi helped drive growth in the central Asian country to 16.7% in the Q1 of 2012 and may already account for more than a third of Mongolia's economy.

Mr Cameron McRae Mongolia country manager for Rio Tinto and CEO of Oyu Tolgoi LLC said that "We are currently in the process of working with banks, and have been for a couple of years, to put in place the world's largest ever project finance raising for the industry and hopefully in the next 6 months we will conclude that."

Oyu Tolgoi began development in 2009 after a landmark investment agreement gave 66% of the project to Canada's Ivanhoe Mines. Rio Tinto now has a majority stake in Ivanhoe and has full operational control over the mine. The project has already cost USD 7 billion in capital investment, and Ivanhoe in March estimated the second phase may cost more than USD 5 billion, heaping pressure on the Anglo and Australian mining giant.

Mr McRae said that the project is on track to begin producing ore by the end of August, 6 months ahead of an original schedule, and it will go into commercial operation next year. But in a remote desert region bereft of infrastructure, much still depends on securing electricity from neighboring China.

He expected commercial agreements with power generators in the Chinese region of Inner Mongolia to be completed on time but conceded that geopolitical concerns between China and Mongolia had slowed the process. Rio Tinto expects to be given the go-ahead to build its own onsite power plant within the next few weeks.

He said that in an ideal world it should have started sooner but it would have pushed capital expenditure up by another USD 1 billion and put further pressure on the project's strained foreign shareholders. The initial $7 billion was all being funded by foreign shareholders and we haven't gone to external debt. I think the capacity of the shareholders was pretty well maxed out.

Mr McRae said that investment in Oyu Tolgoi could already make up 35% of the country's total economy. But the role played by foreign investors in Mongolia's burgeoning mining sector has been subject to criticism, especially ahead of next week's parliamentary elections.

Last year, nationalist backbenchers called on the government to demand an increased stake in Oyu Tolgoi. Investors are also concerned about the popularity of former President Mr Nambar Enkhbayar, who has campaigned for the 2009 deal to be renegotiated.

In May, nationalist backbenchers passed a new law that would subject foreign investments in strategic sectors to greater regulatory oversight, a move thought to have been designed to prevent Ivanhoe from selling a majority stake in its subsidiary SouthGobi Resources to Chinese metals giant Chinalco.

Mr McRae said that the law is not a bad thing. But what is important for Mongolia is how they finalize it and what regulations are in place so it becomes a good law that attracts foreign investment and enables domestic investment to occur.

He said that hostility to foreign investment was overstated. The interesting point in this election is that there are quite a lot of politicians and partners that are out there putting the pro-foreign investment view forward.



Source - Reuters

[0]