Kazakhstan boosts geological expertise

Kazakhstan actively attracts the largest international corporations to conduct geological exploration. Thanks to this work, the country gets access to the world’s technologies in the geological exploration, which allows conducting subsoil surveys at depths in a short time. According to the report announced at a briefing with the Kazakh Ministry of Investment and Development, by the end of the year, 4 billion tenge of private investments are planned to explore minerals in the country. The investments will be used in implementation of 39 projects on exploration of strategic metal deposits, particularly, copper, gold, rare earth metals, lead, zinc and chrome.

“Rio Tinto already conducts drilling operations for two projects. This year they already planned to invest 2.5 billion tenge. By the end of December, they should finish these works. I want to highlight the Iluka Rersources Company from Australia. This year they drilled 10,000 running meters. 600 million tenge were invested. It is planned to build a factory,” commented Kazgeology chairman Galym Nurzhanov.

The German Ulmus Fund will finance the copper mining exploration in the Karagandy region. The cost of the project is estimated at 600 million tenge. For the first time this year the Russian Polymetal company started the geological exploration work in Kazakhstan. The company started research in the promising Shekara area in the Kostanai region. The area might have deposits of gold-silver and copper ores.

“We signed a contract with the large Iranian Ghadir holding and in a short time the company conducted the first geological work with Qazgeology this year. Due to the Iranian company’s investments, the ground geophysical work has been conducted in the Karagandy region. We have plans for the next year and agreements will be signed with Turkish, Japanese and Australian companies,” in Nurzhanov’s words.

Next year it is planned to attract private investments worth nearly 5 billion tenge in Kazakhstan’s geological exploration including, in projects by Kazzinc, Polymetal and Kazakhmys Corporation. According to experts, in the future the industry will attract more investors due to the new code on subsoil use which will be accepted until the end of this year. Owing to the new document, the process of getting a license for the mineral extraction and exploration will be facilitated. In addition, the companies will work exclusively according to international standards to approve mineral resources and reserves.

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