Reuters reported that a lone cement ribbon bisecting hundreds of miles of shale and scrub on the high plains of Mongolia Gobi Desert may be a talisman or curse for nomadic herders that trace their lineage to the empire of Mr Ghengis Khan.
Carved into the Gobi by the Hong Kong listed Mongolian Mining Corporation the 147 mile and two lane roads is due to open next month, allowing the company to speed up cargoes of coal to China from its expanding Ukhaa Khudag mine.
The freshly paved highway is one of the first glimpses of a mining boom that will transform Mongolia fortunes. But many including President Mr Tsakhia Elbegdorj are worried that mining has already put the country fragile pastoral economy under strain and left a million nomads behind.
Mr Puntsag Tsagaan president senior adviser said "Hundreds of rivers, streams and lakes have disappeared because of deforestation, climate change and also partly because of irresponsible mining."
He said that "Our challenge is how to diversify our economy. I don't want my children and my grandchildren to live in a different country called Minegolia it has to be Mongolia. Therefore we have to manage the mineral wealth in a better way."
The road will remove a major logistical hurdle for MMC.
Mr Adilbish Gankhuyag MMC's chief financial officer said "We will start using it next month and it will have a total throughput capacity of about 18 million tonnes per annum this year our total production will be 7 million tonnes so we no longer have logistics and transportation problems."
Mr Shurka Baigalmaa MMC's onsite manager at Ukhaa Khudag said it is also a key part of the company commitment to protect the region's ecosystem which has been damaged by hundreds of overloaded coal trucks churning up grazing land.
MMC is also committed to using the parched region water supplies efficiently with Baigalmaa saying that 95% of water used at the mine washing plant would be recycled.
The open-cast mine is already 70 metres deep and will eventually descend 300 metres but she said the company would limit the impact by refilling exhausted seams using peat excavated from new mining areas further west.
(Sourced from Reuters)
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