Oyu tolgoi /gold and copper mine/
This is the world’s largest copper and gold mine, Oyu Tolgoi, located about 550 kilometers south of Ulaanbaatar in the Gobi Desert. Firstly, experts estimated that mining contains 16 million tonne of copper and 623 tonne of gold. However, copper and gold reserves are to be extracted from a depth of 1,500 meters for at least 30 years, with annual production of about 430,000 tonne of copper and 12 tonne of gold. The Rio Tinto company started production in summer 2013. By then, the company have already made investments of almost 4.5 billion euros as the development of the deposit. After that, they scheduled the second expansion phase for completion in 2020. The specialists expect commissioning of the mine alone will increase Mongolia’s GDP by 40 to 50 percent.
