Afghan may have considerable geological deposits

Afghanistan may have as much as a trillion dollars of mineral and petroleum reserves, according to initial estimates by the US Geological Survey. The article mentions that China has already signed a $3 billion contract with the Afghan government to develop the world's biggest copper mine. If the USGS verifies the preliminary estimates, the Afghan government will have considerable revenues for a myriad of reconstruction projects. However, this is all contigent on coming to terms with the Taliban and other insurgent groups and in finding ways to reduce corruption in the government and among warlords. Afghan president Karzai is reported to be arranging meetings with some of the Taliban and insurgents in hopes of settling their differences peacefully. This might require Karzai to specify a date for having the US-led occupation leave the country. Whatever happens, it would be ironic to learn that Afghanistan indeed has the minerals and petroleum that early findings suggest.

Back in the late 1990s, a US corporation had been interested in building a pipeline through Afghanistan that would have carried oil from the Casbian Sea area through Pakistan to the Arabian Sea. The recent disclosure of substantial geological deposits indicates that there may be much more than US corporations and the US government considered.

Bob

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Afghan ‘Geological Reserves Worth A Trillion Dollars’

http://www.outlookAfghanistan.net/news_Pages/main_news.html#01


KABUL - Afghanistan, one of the world's poorest countries, is sitting on mineral and petroleum reserves worth an estimated one trillion dollars, President Hamid Karzai said Sunday. The war-ravaged nation could become one of the richest in the world if helped to tap its geological deposits, Karzai told reporters. "I have very good news for Afghans," Karzai said. "The initial figures we have obtained show that our mineral deposits are worth a thousand billion dollars -- not a thousand million dollars but a thousand billion," he said.

He based his assertion, he said, on a survey being carried out by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), due to be completed in "a couple of months". The USGS, the US government's scientific agency, has been working on the 17-million dollar survey for a number of years, Karzai said.

While Afghanistan is not renowned as a resource-rich country, it has a wide range of deposits, including copper, iron ore, gold and chromites, as well as natural gas, oil and precious and semi-precious stones. Little has been exploited because the country has been mired in conflict for 30 years, and is embroiled in a vicious insurgency by Islamist rebels led by the Taliban.

More than 100,000 foreign troops under US and NATO command are battling the insurgents, with another 40,000 due for deployment this year. China and India have bid for contracts to develop mines, with the Chinese winning a copper contract. An iron ore contract is due to be awarded later this year.

In 2007, China's state-owned metals giant Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC) signed a three-billion-dollar contract to develop the Aynak copper mine -- one of the world's biggest -- over the next 30 years. First discovered in 1974, the site, 30 kilometers (20 miles) south of Kabul in Logar, is estimated to contain 11.3 million tones of copper. The Hajigak iron ore mine in Bamyan province, north of Kabul, is currently under tender, with one Chinese and half a dozen Indian firms bidding. The contract is for exploitation of almost two billion tones of high-grade ore, involving processing, smelting, steel production and electricity production. (AFP)