Julian Dierkes describes the recent economic downturn in Mongolia in a new blog post. Thanks to this tweet by Turquoise Hill for the link.
From that blog post:
Now, coal sales to China have tumbled, the giant Tavan Tolgoi coal project is no longer the object of transnational investment desires, and direct investment in Mongolian ventures other than Oyu Tolgoi seems to have evaporated.
That is of course exactly what one expects to happen. If policy decisions on foreign investments show that the Mongolian government can’t be trusted to keep any promises, nobody will want to invest in the country.
I still have Turquoise Hill in my list of global warming stocks. That’s because I think that the Mongolians and Rio Tinto will eventually figure out how to get that massive amount of gold and copper out of the ground and make a large pile of money for both sides involved. Since I am looking at the long-term potential (what will happen in the next decade), I still think that investing a small amount of highly speculative money in this project might be a good idea.
