This yr marks the sixtieth anniversary of Mongolia and France’s institution of diplomatic relations. To begin off the yr of celebration, the 2 governments signed a significant funding settlement that may each diversify Mongolia’s exports and help France’s nuclear power sector.
In January 2025, Mongolia and France reached a $1.6 billion investment agreement to develop Zuuvch-Ovoo uranium mine in a joint mega-project between France’s Orano Group and Mongolia’s state-owned MonAtom Group. Through the signing ceremony, Mongolia’s Prime Minister Oyun-Erdene Luvsannamsrai known as the funding settlement a “historic day in Mongolia-France relations.”
The deal will enhance Mongolia’s visibility on this planet’s power and minerals provide chains. The Zuuvch-Ovoo and the Dulaan-Uul deposits in Mongolia’s Dornogovi province have 90,000 tonnes of uranium deposits, and the brand new mining challenge will intention to extract 2,500 tonnes of uranium per yr.
Orano, a number one French mining firm that additionally has companies in Kazakhstan, has been working in Mongolia for the final 27 years. Throughout that interval, demand for minerals, metals, and nuclear power rose. France, as a significant nuclear power energy, has been looking for dependable companions to safe its power wants.
Commenting on the profitable partnership between Mongolia and France, Laurent Saint-Martin, France’s minister delegate for international commerce, stated, “The settlement is value 1.6 billion over 30 years, it’s a main partnership for securing our power provide.”
Since finding the uranium deposit in 2010, Badrakh Power – the three way partnership fashioned by Orano Group and MonAtom to develop the location – has made efforts in addressing points comparable to security, safety, and environmental care. The lately signed funding settlement contains commitments on investing in the area people and coaching and strengthening the Mongolian work power within the sector.
Within the final three years, Badrakh Power has made main leaps to materialize the uranium partnership between Mongolia and France. Between 2021 and 2022, a pilot operation occurred to make use of a system often called In Situ Leaching (ISL) and In Situ Restoration (ISR) to exhibit the challenge’s technical, financial and environmental feasibility.
In 2023, throughout President Khurelsukh Ukhnaa’s state go to to Paris, a protocol settlement on the uranium deal was accepted, signalling help on the highest degree of presidency. Khurelsukh’s go to additionally demonstrated the rising ties between Ulaanbaatar and Paris.
The financing of the mega-project will are available phases, and “[d]evelopment of the challenge is deliberate to take 4 years, after which the Zuuvch-Ovoo mine will go into manufacturing,” in response to a press release from Orano. The corporate added, “With a 30-year estimated lifespan, the challenge represents an preliminary funding of round $500 million earlier than the deposit comes on stream, and a complete of $1.6 billion over the mine’s lifetime, creating 1,600 direct and oblique jobs.”
Given Mongolia’s dire must diversify funding from third neighbors, this has been a confidence booster for the nation’s mining trade particularly, and international funding extra broadly.
Nonetheless, there may be some resistance among the many Mongolian public, notably regarding well being issues attributable to uranium mining, and notably the transformation of uranium into “yellowcake.” These discussions performed out in shops media in addition to social media.
Nonetheless, Orano and the federal government of Mongolia argue that the trendy expertise used within the course of will forestall any such hurt. “The Franco-Mongolian challenge will apply worldwide requirements and state-of-the-art methods by way of security, safety and the atmosphere, setting a benchmark for the event of the uranium trade in Mongolia,” Orano’s press launch pledged. Supporters of the deal additionally say that nuclear energy and uranium exports is usually a optimistic aspect in Mongolia’s modernization.
The profitable signing of the France-Mongolia funding settlement marks a significant success within the diversification of Ulaanbaatar’s financial insurance policies and embodies the federal government’s efforts to draw strategic funding from third neighbors with key monetary and technological capabilities. To the Mongolian authorities and the stakeholders, the profitable implementation of the uranium mining challenge will likely be a benchmark for introducing new expertise and coaching employees in a specialised discipline. Having that have will likely be essential for Mongolia’s subsequent financial endeavors. Orano, as a number one French big within the trade, has promised an equal and wholesome enterprise partnership.
“Twenty years in the past, Orano and Mongolia have initiated the primary steps to collectively develop world-class uranium deposits in Mongolia’s Dornogobi province,” Claude Imauven, the chairman of Orano’s Board of Administrators, informed The Diplomat. “…[I]t made me proud and honored, because the chairman of the board of Orano, to see Mongolia’s Nice State Khural expressing its help to what has develop into the challenge of an formidable long-term partnership and a significant FDI in Mongolia.”
Emphasizing the strategic significance of power provide chains, Imauven added, “Primarily based on shared advantages, the very best technological and environmental requirements, and on human abilities improvement, this challenge illustrates Orano’s values and mining capabilities in addition to it displays France’s and Mongolia’s will to additional improve their bilateral relationship in a brand new sector of cooperation.”
To Mongolia, its landlocked place has all the time posed challenges, together with when looking for a 3rd neighbor as an export companion. Mongolian exports should traverse the territory of both China or Russia to achieve every other vacation spot on this planet. To beat these challenges, Mongolia’s authorities insurance policies have relied on having sturdy bilateral relations with Moscow and Beijing, which is why Ulaanbaatar sealed complete strategic partnerships with each nations.
France, as Mongolia’s third neighbor, has been investing in cultural diplomacy and people-to-people exchanges, and the uranium deal is a significant benchmark. The profitable implementation of the deal will make Mongolia one of many main uranium exporters on this planet. At the moment, Kazakhstan, Canada, and Namibia are the top global producers of uranium. If the Zuuvch-Ovoo challenge unfolds as deliberate, Mongolia would leapfrog into the highest 5.
