Polo Resources interested in little Tavan Tolgoi

Following letter of Polo Resources addressed to Batbold Sukhbaatar, Minister For Foreign Affairs and Trade has surfaced in Mongolian media lately. The letter is dated Jan 18, 2009. It expressed the company's interest to develop a small part of Tavan Tolgoi,coking coal mine in South Gobi aimag. Tavan Tolgoi, reputedly one of world's largest coking coal mines is to be auctioned off by Government of Mongolia soon, with government holding 51% interest in it.

Minister Batbold referred the letter to Zorigt, Minister of Minerals. It is not clear what action the Minerals Minister took. However, Polo Resources may have missed deadline for submitting bid documentations.

Here is transcript of the letter for our readers' interest.
MonInfo News Service

18 Jan, 2009 To:Honorable Minister S.Batbold, Minister for Foreign Affairs Mongolian Parliament Re:Interest in Tavan tolgoi project Dear Sir, I would like to firstly congratulate the new government on all the great initiatives I have witnessed since the election and that Mongolia has managed to keep a positive attitude in tough world times; it is a credit to the hard work by the current Government. The purpose of this letter is to allow us to introduce our group's involvement in Mongolia and indicate our desire to make a bid for a small part of Tavan Tolgoi. Our Group is a Joint Venture of three companies including a Publicly Listed London Company-Polo Resources Limited, MG Capita (who represents the interests of EBRD and other financial institutions and American Listed Company-Peabody Energy (world's largest coal company) who is currently farming into our joint venture. Polo Resources LLC currently holds 60 coal and 26 Uranium licenses in Mongolia and is active in developing several coal mine projects including the Ereen mine in Bulgan Province(2 Mtpa), Banner Project (2 Mtpa) in Tavan Tolgoi and Union Project in Tuv Province (2 Mtpa). We have also developed good relations with Chinese offtake groups and have offices in China and London. As you are aware Peabody has lodged as a sole bidder for a larger portion of Tavan Tolgoi and this bid which also includes Peabody (25%) share is on the basis of targeting a smaller part of Tavan Tolgoi. It should be considered that this smaller bid is tailored for a quick start approach to assist in generate cash immediately for Mongolia. Some of the benefits of our project proposal are:
Small Immediate Project-only 7% of the total resources
Separate License 11943X with appromixately 500Mt of coal defined
Faster development-full production in 1-2 years
Government receives tax & royalties from start of project
All infrastructure needed is included
World Class mine established with world class standards
Government receives -US$2.1 bn over 10 years as equity, royalties and taxes