Mongolian legislators will vote next month whether to rewrite
a 2015 investment agreement with mining giant Rio Tinto (ASX, LON, NYSE:RIO)
for the massive Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold-silver mine, located in the Gobi Desert.
The landlocked country currently owns 34% of the mine, with
Canada’s Turquoise Hill Resources (TSE, NSYE: TRQ), which is majority-owned by
Rio Tinto, holding the remaining 66%.
While the parliament is leaving the agreement that set up the project’s ownership alone, at least for now, it’s likely to approve in August binding recommendations that would end the 2015 “Dubai Agreement,” covering the costly and several times delayed underground expansion of Oyu Tolgoi.
A lawyer involved in Mongolian mining deals, speaking on
condition of anonymity , told MINING.COM that critics of the original agreement
argue the four-year-old deal made changes to original agreement, signed in 2009.
As a result, he said it should have been subject to full parliamentary approval,
instead of just the prime minister’s okay.
Among the binding recommendations lawmakers will vote on,
there is a stipulation that would bring forward the date when Mongolia starts
receiving dividends from Oyu Tolgoi, currently set at 2041. That year is when
the country’s debt from the project is supposed to be repaid.
There’s also a clause that forces Rio to build a power
plant, even though the company is already committed to do so. The world’s No. 2
miner earmarked in 2018 $250 million a year for the development of such power
station in its 2019 and 2020 spending plans.
The facility, which could come with a bill as high as $1
billion, would add to the already hefty cost of the mine’s expansion, currently
pegged at $5.3 billion. Earlier this week, Rio warned the ongoing project could
as much as an additional $1.9 billion. It also warned of further delays of
up to two and a half years.
The first sustainable production is now expected between May
2022 and June 2023, though Rio said a final estimate cost and schedule
would be announced in the second half of 2020.
This is not the first time Rio faces legal woes in Mongolia. Last year, the government served Oyu Tolgoi with a $155 million bill in back taxes — its second tax dispute since 2014.
Shortly after, the Mongolian Anti-Corruption Authority (ACA) asked Rio to provide financial data related to the mine. The request is part of a probe about possible abuse of power that has seen the arrest of two former prime ministers and a former finance minister.
The mining giant is also facing increasing pressure from
shareholders about its alleged lack of transparency about pledges to the
Mongolian government and escalating costs for the expansion.
Rio is currently Mongolia’s largest foreign investor, having
ploughed so far more than $7 billion into the first phase of its Oyu
Tolgoi mine.
The operation helped spur a mining boom that drove the nation’s economic growth up to double digits from 2011-2013. A rapid collapse in foreign investment and falling commodity prices, however, saw Mongolia plunge into an economic crisis in 2016, forcing it to seek aid from the International Monetary Fund.
Oyu Tolgoi was discovered in 2001 and Rio gained control of it in 2012. Once finished, the expansion is expected to lift the mine’s production from 125–150kt this year to 560k tonnes of copper concentrate at full tilt from 2025, making it the world’s third-largest copper mine.