Posted on 07/17/2011 9:14:09 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
TAVAN TOLGOI, MONGOLIA — Overlooking a deep black gash in the Gobi Desert, Od Jambaljamts watched Caterpillar trucks rumble across the rim of the world’s biggest undeveloped coal deposit — and mused on Mongolia’s good fortune to have the world’s most voracious consumer of coal just a few scores of miles away.
“China is so big that even if they cut their economy in half they will still need what we have here,”..
With China so close and so hungry for energy — and Mongolia so rich in what China needs — locals with mining licenses and a swelling swarm of foreign investors believe that only the absence of modern transport links to China clouds Mongolia’s future as a would-be Saudi Arabia of coal.
.....China’s demand for the coal, uranium and other minerals that Mongolia has in abundance — but has so far barely touched — is gargantuan and growing. China, which surpassed the United States as the world’s biggest energy user in 2009, needs to find enormous quantities of new fuel to meet what, according to the International Energy Agency, will be a 75 percent increase in its energy needs by 2035.
But as China scours the globe for coal, oil, uranium and natural gas — and hunts for rivers just beyond its borders on which to build electricity-generating dams — it increasingly confronts a stubborn reality: What Beijing and foreign businessmen embrace as a simple law of supply and demand stirs complex, and sometimes dangerous, political passions, security fears and big power rivalries..........
.....Now, after repeated false starts, authorities are due to announce a decision soon on competing bids from China, Russia, the United States, Japan and elsewhere. Beijing, Moscow and Washington have each leaned on Mongolia to opt for its candidate....
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
June 11, 2011 Baltimore: Coal exports through port booming Cross the Bay Bridge on any day of the week, and you're likely to see several giant freighters anchored in the water below.A surge in coal exports from the port of Baltimore has turned the Chesapeake Bay into a maritime parking lot.Demand from China, India and other countries for high-priced metallurgic coal to fuel steel production has grown so strong that ships are backed up south of the bridge waiting to gain a berth at one of Baltimore's two coal terminals…….”
July 2, 2011: Montana: Legal gamesmanship threatens our energy future “Texas Gov. Rick Perry is able to boast about job growth under his watch, noting that over 265,000 jobs, or nearly 37 percent of the jobs created nationwide since the summer of 2009, have been created in the Lone Star state.
He credits this growth to a few simple conditions: low taxes, a regulatory climate that is fair and predictable, and a legal system that limits frivolous lawsuits. According to the Wall Street Journal, nearly one-fourth of the 70 companies that left California this year relocated to Texas.
When new or relocating companies and investors survey the landscape and consider Montana, what do they see? Well, when it comes to natural-resource development, the landscape looks risky.
Recent headlines highlight two major resource development projects slogging through endless legal and regulatory challenges. Investment flees this kind of uncertainty, so Montanans interested in the future economic stability of this state should be wary of the signals we send…” --- [relates short history of 2 outrageous examples] -- “The common experience for Tongue River Railroad and Tonbridge Power is this: Even if you play by the rules, even if you follow the letter of the law, even if you engage with the public during a planning process, even if you get formal approval from the regulatory authorities, you are certain to face organized opposition whose sole intent is to frustrate project development to the point of financial starvation….”
Of course, our loving and concerned government, wants to burden our country and livelihoods (whatever that will shake out to be in the future) with cap and trade enslavement. Whereas China gets to go on it’s merry way without that “bolder around it’s neck”. The US has just had it too good for too long—it’s gotta be taught a lesson. But, hey, at least Al Gore will be a Billionaire—he is so worthy of that, doncha know?
Mongolia is one of those faraway places I’d love to see. I hope they are wary of Chinese ambition in this area (somehow, I think they are well aware of history). That aside, I hope the US gets its own act together to carefully expoit out own resources..and get the big and stifling government out of the way.
Mongolia is/was a member of the U.S. coalition in Afghanistan. I hope they still consider us an ally after the last 2.5 years.
Obama is leveling the U.S. playing field in every way and in every place he can. People focus on the areas they know best and where they are most personally affected. But this is happening to everyone. Obama is hanging us separately before we are aware and learn all the parts of the pie the Left’s destroying and rally to use our power to hang together against his administration. His Czars have put it all into motion.
crap...boulder.
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