Though Not Yet Open, a Huge Mine Is Transforming Mongolia’s Landscape [View all]

[phantom power]

The spice must flow.

Even before its scheduled opening next month, the work on the huge Oyu Tolgoi mine project already accounts for roughly 30 percent of Mongolia’s annual economic output.

The sheer scale of the mineral wealth to be found here — an estimated 41 million pounds of copper and 21 million ounces of gold — on the dusty edges of the Gobi Desert has long attracted mining executives from around the world. Now, after a decade-long effort, Canada’s Turquoise Hill Resources, in a joint venture with the Mongolian government, is about to start pulling the mine’s riches from the ground.

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The development is inexorably altering the area, for good and ill.

“The high level of respiratory illness in the southern Gobi is due to the influence of the mining companies, as well as to the influx of people into the region and the subsequent increase in building projects,” said Narantsetseg Logii, a doctor at the Health Sciences University of Mongolia.

In fact, the mine is altering the entire country. Once it reaches full production, which is expected to be in 2018, the operation will be among the top three copper-gold mines in the world and is expected to account for more than a third of Mongolia’s economic output.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/14/world/asia/oyu-tolgoi-mine-in-khanbogd-is-transforming-mongolia.html?_r=0