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History is typically difficult to see up close, but it’s possible that resources are sparking a great geo-political reordering on par with the mass discoveries of oil that made the Middle East a rising economic power the mid-20th Century.  Witness the country of Mongolia, a geo-political pawn for much of the last hundred years, but now drawing increased interest for its potential resource riches.

A story I found on www.oilprice.com provides the context:

Mongolia’s mining sector has some of the world’s richest deposits of gold and copper, uranium, coal, fluorspar as well as (rare earth elements) REEs such as tantalum, niobium, thorium, yttrium and zircon. According to a 2009 estimation by the U.S. Geological Survey, Mongolia has 31million tons of rare earth reserves, or 16.77 percent of the world’s total, exceeded only by China.

Oh, and coal.

Erdenes, a state firm is overseeing the Tavan Tolgoi (“Five Hills”) massive coal deposit located in the east Tsankhi area of Mongolia’s Gobi desert, estimated to hold over 7.5 billion metric tons of coking coal, essential for making steel, and the currently world’s biggest untapped deposit.

Where’s it gonna go?

Potential suitors include Russian, Chinese, Japanese and South Korean firms, while representatives from 20 global investment banks jetted into sunny [Ulaanbaatar] to make their pitches.

While Mongolia’s economy was traditionally based on herding and agriculture, neighboring China’s rising demand for minerals has underpinned its current mining boom, and Beijing would undoubtedly happily buy virtually all of Tavan Tolgoi’s output.

In terms of geo-politics, resources offer Mongolia an opportunity to recast its uncomfortable relationship as a buffer-state between Russia (dating back to the old Soviet Union) and China, by ushering Japan and South Korea into the picture.

The fact that the U.S. is nowhere mentioned in this article (unless of course you count the resource estimates for Mongolia’s riches, prepared courtesy of the US Geological Survey) speaks volumes.

Interestingly, though, Vice President Joe Biden’s travel itinerary for this month includes a visit to Ulaanbaatar. Might this be an indication that policy makers are finally realizing that resource development will be key to the “Wealth of Nations” in the near future?

What does a copper strike in Chile have to do with the debt-deadlock in Washington, D.C.?

More than might at first meet the eye, as this Bloomberg piece makes clear, tying the upswing in copper’s price to a strike at Chile’s Escondida Mine added to the dollar’s drop as the debt crisis drags on.

How interconnected is our just-in-time global market?  Enough that a five-day strike by Chilean copper miners is attracting global attention, now that some see copper as a leading economic indicator.

One way or another, the debt crisis will be settled – or kicked down the road, as the favored Washington phrase goes – and eventually Chile’s copper miners will reach a deal and go back to work. But the bigger reality here is the ongoing interplay of rising resource demand and global economic growth, with a more than a dash of fiscal stability thrown into the mix.

A handful of countries situated near the top of the world are racing to firm up their territorial claims to untold amounts of oil, natural gas, gold, zinc, copper and other metals. A new piece from the U.K. Guardian highlights this renewed scramble for resource rights beneath the Arctic icecap. I treated this story in [...]

In what may become the most expensive diversified minerals takeover to-date, China and Brazil appear set to engage in a strategic battle over copper deposits in Africa, according to Bloomberg.  In line with China’s recent efforts to enlarge its footprint in Africa in its quest for natural resources, China’s Jinchuan Group is considering countering Rio de Janeiro-based Vale’s [...]

A new piece in the New Scientist underlines the importance of strategic metals to our new economy — from tech toys like the iPad and smart phones to green-tech applications ranging from solar panels to wind turbines. The Tellurium in the title is an element critical to new solar panel applications. As New Scientist puts [...]

The election victory of leftist Peruvian presidential candidate Ollanta Humala in this week’s runoff election has instilled fears of higher taxes and new restrictive policies in the mining sector.  Peru is a leading producer of precious metals, and the U.S. relies heavily on Peruvian imports of zinc, tin, gold, copper, and silver. (To see exactly [...]

As Reuters reports, indications are that Americans could soon be buying Zambian or Saudi Arabian copper from Canada and China. Canada’s Barrick, the world’s largest gold mining company, is attempting to win a geopolitical bidding war with its Chinese competitor Minmetal in the effort to gain control over two valuable copper mines in Zambia and [...]