Mongolia's Mega Mine
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 6 July 2018
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The gigantic Oyu Tolgoi copper mine will certainly make some people rich, but how many of them will be Mongolian?
Ed Butler speaks to the BBC's Roger Hearing, who is at the mine, fresh from taking a taxi ride hundreds of metres below ground. He has been delving into who will profit more from this vast project in the middle of the Gobi Desert - the Mongolian state or mine operator Rio Tinto. Meanwhile, above ground, the BBC's Joshua Thorpe speaks to some disgruntled herdsmen.
(Picture: Mongolian herdsman; Credit: BBC)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Ed Butler. Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:08.5 | Coming up, we get inside the monster copper mine that's transforming Mongolia's economy. |
| 0:15.4 | This is our closest community and we bring impacts and risk to the community. |
| 0:22.4 | And we wanted to be a good neighbour with them. But is this mine making Mongolians lives better or worse? It allows it |
| 0:29.0 | to manipulate the government, to fire people, hire people. It now has the powers to actually |
| 0:37.4 | decide which government is going to rule this country. |
| 0:41.3 | Inside Mongolia's mega mine, that's Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:48.3 | Now imagine, if you will, one of the world's largest unspoiled wilderness is the Gobi Desert and then picture within its |
| 0:55.3 | vast expanses, a huge industrial mine. That mine in question is called Oyu Tolgoy and it's been, |
| 1:02.2 | well, it's been pretty controversial, almost ever since copper reserves were first discovered there |
| 1:06.9 | back at the start of the century. As part of a wide-ranging exploration into the economy and |
| 1:12.0 | business of Mongolia, our reporter and WBR presenter, Roger Hearing, has gone there for us. He joins |
| 1:19.3 | me now. Roger, this is clearly an extraordinary place, isn't it? And it's a huge part of |
| 1:24.6 | the entire Mongolian economy. Absolutely. I mean, just to give you a picture, it's in the middle of the Gobi Desert. It's a huge part of the entire Mongolian economy. |
| 1:30.7 | Absolutely. I mean, just to give you a picture, it's in the middle of the Gobi Desert. |
| 1:34.2 | It's a very, very desolate place, a very long way from anywhere. |
| 1:39.3 | In fact, the closest thing here really is the Chinese border, which is about 120 kilometres down the road. But it's a place that actually supplies a third of Mongolia's entire economy from the copper |
| 1:46.7 | that's dug out of this place. |
| 1:49.0 | There's an open-cast mine. |
| 1:50.5 | There's also now a very deep-cast mine. |
| 1:53.1 | They're beginning to get underway. |
| 1:55.2 | That's not going to be on stream for two or three years. |
... |
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