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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Kyrgyzstan
Index
Soviet geologists have estimated Kyrgyzstan's coal reserves at about 27
billion tons, of which the majority remained entirely unexploited in the
mid-1990s. About 3 billion tons of that amount are judged to be of highest
quality. This coal has proven difficult to exploit, however, because most
of it is in small deposits deep in the mountains. Kyrgyzstan also has oil
resources; small deposits of oil-bearing shale have been located in
southern Kyrgyzstan, and part of the Fergana oil and natural gas complex
lies in Kyrgyzstani territory. In the Osh region, four pools of oil, four
of natural gas, and four mixed pools have been exploited since the 1950s;
however, the yield of all of them is falling in the 1990s. In 1992 their
combined output was 112,000 tons of oil and 65 million cubic meters of
natural gas, compared with the republic's annual consumption of 2.5
million tons of oil and 3 billion cubic meters of natural gas.
Kyrgyzstan's iron ore deposits are estimated at 5 billion tons, most
containing about 30 percent iron. Copper deposits in the mountains are
located in extremely complex mineral deposits, making extraction costly.
The northern mountains also contain lead, zinc, molybdenum, vanadium, and
bismuth. The south has deposits of bauxite and mercury; Kyrgyzstan was the
Soviet Union's main supplier of mercury, but in the 1990s plummeting
mercury prices have damaged the international market. A tin and tungsten
mine was 80 percent complete in 1995. Kyrgyzstan had a virtual monopoly on
supplying antimony to the Soviet Union, but post-Soviet international
markets are small and highly specialized. Uranium, which was in high
demand for the Soviet Union's military and atomic energy programs, no
longer is mined in Kyrgyzstan.
The Soviet Union's largest gold mine was located at Makmal in
Kyrgyzstan, and in the Soviet period Kyrgyzstan's 170 proven deposits put
it in third place behind only Russia and Uzbekistan in gold production in
the union. Two more promising deposits, at Kumtor and Jerui, have been
discovered. Kumtor, said to be the seventh-largest gold deposit in the
world with an estimated value of US$5.5 billion, is being explored by the
Canadian Metals Company (Cameco), a uranium company, in a joint-venture
operation. Gold deposits are concentrated in Talas Province in
north-central Kyrgyzstan, where as much as 200 tons may exist; deposits in
Makmal are estimated at sixty tons. Deposits adjacent to the Chatkal River
in the northwest amount to an estimated 150 tons.
The terms of the agreement for Kumtor exploitation with Cameco, which
gains one-third of profits from gold extraction, caused public concern in
1992. To improve control of the mineral-extraction and refining processes,
and to address the uncontrolled movement of precious metals out of the
country, President Akayev created a new administrative agency, Kyrgyzaltyn
(Kyrgyzstan Gold), to replace Yuzhpolmetal, the Soviet-era body
responsible for precious metals. In January 1993, Akayev also brought the
country's antimony and mercury mines into Kyrgyzaltyn. The latter are
especially important because mercury is used to refine gold. Control of
the mercury mines makes more likely the realization of Akayev's hope that
Kyrgyzstan will become more than just a supplier of raw materials.
Although Kyrgyzstan has one of the largest proven gold reserves in the
world, in the early 1990s fuel and spare parts shortages combined with
political disputes to hamper output (see Government and Politics, this
ch.). Production in 1994 was 3.5 tons, but the output goal for 1996 was
ten tons.
Kyrgyzstan's major energy source, water, has also been discussed as a
commercial product. The export of bottled mineral and fresh water was the
object of several unrealized plans in the mid-1990s.
Data as of March 1996
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