E&MJ’s sister magazine, The Asia Miner, reported shipment of iron ore from North Asia Resources’ Oyut Ovoo project to China will begin shortly with project partner China Railway Mongolia Investment LLC securing a throughput quota of 200,000 mt of iron ore from September to December 2010.
Shipping will eventually become more convenient with China Railway Mongolia and North Asia’s Mongolian company Golden Pogada LLC being granted a land use rights license to an 18-hectare parcel of land adjacent to the Choir Railway station on the Trans-Mongolian Railway for construction of a dock and associated facilities.
The dock will be the destination for material from Oyut Ovoo with an extension line to be constructed linking with the Trans-Mongolian line, therefore allowing easy access to China.
The first phase of the construction of the dock and extension line is expected to be completed in early September. China Railway Mongolia has entered into a strategic partnership with North Asia Resources to jointly develop the Oyut Ovoo mine with mining expected to be in full swing during this quarter.
Oyut Ovoo is a high-grade iron ore and copper deposit within a skarn and breccia-pipe intrusive complex. The main property comprises an area of 12.01 km2 over five contiguous mineral licenses in south-central Mongolia. Iron and copper-gold mineralization associated with skarns and hydrothermal breccias is widespread on the property over an area of about 3 km2.
The project partners have completed a technical valuation exercise on the First Mine Area of Oyut Ovoo, representing 1 km2 of the total concession area. An independent technical report estimated a total JORC-equivalent measured, indicated and inferred resource of 148.9 million mt of iron ore and 180,000 mt of copper resources in the First Mine Area alone, which covers about 8.33% of the total mine area.
There are two main areas of focus in facilitating smooth transportation of resources from Oyut Ovoo—ensuring that road conditions are suitable for trucks to travel the 265 km to Choir and establishment of a docking facility at the station that will enable the loading and unloading of up to 3.5 million mt of iron lumps and concentrate each year.
