Elixir Energy is ramping up works at its fully owned Nomgon IX coal-bed methane production sharing contract in Mongolia. The company has engaged its Mongolian drilling contractor Erdenedrilling to put a second drill rig to work on the Hutul 1S strat-hole which is due to spud tomorrow.

The hole is stepping-out from the Nomgon sub-basin, and the company said it could potentially identify either a new sub-basin or an extension to the Nomgon sub-basin. Advanced planning is underway for more stat holes to be drilled in the coming months.

Meanwhile, the Nomgon 5S strat-hole encountered several issues and will be re-drilled immediately to the north of its original location. Elixir maintains this will be at little cost to the company, as the drilling contract is on a per metre basis.

Elixir has also received final gas content results for the Nomgon-2 core-hole, showing dry ash free numbers in the main seam averaging 8.6 metres cubed per tonne. These results are similar to those reported in June for the Nomgon-1 well which measured 8.9 metres cubed per tonne.

Further analysis is being carried out on the Nombon-2 core and results from gas adsorption analysis are due next month. Managing Director Neil Young said the company is pleased with how its 2020 program at Nomgon IX CBM PSC is progressing.

“Our 2020 programme in Mongolia is continuing successfully and we are pleased to have agreed with ED to put another rig to work exploring in a new part of the PSC area. Our appraisal programme in the Nomgon sub-basin continues to deliver excellent results and we look forward to further information from the somewhat delayed Nomgon 5S strat-hole that is still underway,”Neil stated. “Our seismic work is proving productive in continuing to add new drilling targets that (in the success case) will add to our inventory of CSG bearing sub-basins across the PSC,” he added.

Finally, the interpretation of 2D seismic data from the 2019 programme and a recently acquired data set is growing the company’s confidence in multiple new drilling targets.

The Mongol Rally, described as ‘10,000 miles of chaos across mountain, deserts and steppe’, has a rule book that might not even fill a page of the regulations for the World Rally Championship.

“Your car can’t exceed 1200cc. No back-up team is allowed – you are on your own. And you must raise £1000 for the rally’s nominated environmental charity, Cool Earth. That’s about it,” says Frazer Steele.

Brandon and Frazer Steele’s faith in their 1998 Micra will undergo its severest test next July when the Ballynahinch brothers, fans of touring car racing, try something new. “The Micra just takes us from A to B, from Ballynahinch to Dublin, for our work. Next year we’re moving the ‘B’ to Mongolia.”

Bristol based art graduate Tom Morgan formed his company The Adventurists in 2006 to channel his obsession for extreme outdoor challenges and thus the Prague-Ulaanbaatar run, by whatever route, was born.

“This year was cancelled because of the coronavirus,” says rally publicity officer Amanda Ford. “We could only accept 405 entries for 2021. Mongolia has closed its borders, so, for now, the finish has been relocated to Ulan-Ude in Siberia.”

Ford lauds the age range of competitors: “They’re between 18 and 80. Last year one team, Adventure To Prevent Dementia, was made up of older people,” she says. “A team can have as many as can legally fit in the car.”

(Reuters) - Wells Fargo & Co WFC.N is exploring a sale of its asset management business, in what would be the U.S. bank's biggest shake-up since former Bank of New York Mellon chief executive Charles Scharf joined as CEO last year, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

The potential deal would illustrate how Scharf is looking at drastic moves, beyond cost cuts, as he seeks to turn Wells Fargo around following a years-old sales practices scandal. He has said he is targeting $10 billion in savings annually over the long term.

Wells Fargo’s asset management arm, which managed $578 billion on behalf of customers as of the end of June, could fetch more than $3 billion in a sale, two of the sources said.

The San Francisco-based bank has discussed a potential deal with asset management companies and private equity firms, according to the sources, who cautioned that a divestment is not certain and asked not to be identified because the matter is confidential.

A Wells Fargo spokesman declined to comment.

Wells Fargo reported a 57% drop in its third-quarter profit earlier this month, missing Wall Street’s expectations, as persistent costs continued to haunt the bank.

The bank has been grappling with these costs since 2016, when it entered a settlement with regulators that detailed millions of phony accounts employees had created in customers’ names without their permission to hit sales targets.

Bank executives have signaled repeatedly that the worst of the fallout is in the past, but elevated operating losses have persisted.

The U.S. Federal Reserve has placed restrictions on Wells Fargo’s balance sheet, to be lifted only when the management team can prove it has sufficiently improved risk management and controls.

Scharf told analysts on the bank’s third-quarter earnings call this month that he expected to create some room on Wells Fargo’s balance sheet by exiting non-core businesses.

“I just want to be clear. We are exiting them because they are not core to serving our core customer base on the consumer and large corporate side. We are not exiting them because of the asset cap,” Scharf said.

The asset management business, which is part of Wells Fargo’s wealth and investment management division, offers mutual funds and retirement products. Wells Fargo plans to keep its wealth management business that caters to high-net worth clients, the sources said.

The wealth and investment management division is led by Barry Sommers, the former head of JPMorgan Chase & Co's JPM.N wealth management business that Scharf recruited in June.

Wells Fargo had started to trim the division even before Scharf because CEO. It sold its retirement plan services business to Principal Financial Group Inc PFG.O last year for $1.2 billion.

Reporting by David French in New York; Additional reporting by Imani Moise and Joshua Franklin in New York; Editing by Daniel Wallis

Copper has touched $7,000 per metric tonne on the London Metal Exchange, having climbed roughly 60% from a late-March nadir. The industrial metal is trading at levels unseen since 2018 despite a surge in coronavirus infections in Europe and beyond, stockpiles rising off recent lows, and expectations of a surplus in 2021. The reason is China, which is dominating the 24-million-tonnes per year market like never before thanks to a recovery that is outpacing other economies.

The metal’s rebound from four-year lows in March mirrors the rally in that other gravity-defying asset class, the FANG-powered U.S. stock market. Copper’s rally has exceeded expectations, given that the most pessimistic forecasts for pandemic-related supply disruptions haven’t been borne out. Peru’s production fell in August from a month earlier, hit by worker shortages, but output in Chile, the world’s top exporter, increased. BHP Group-operated Escondida, the Chilean copper mine that’s the world’s largest, avoided a strike last week, even if workers at Lundin Mining Corp.’s far smaller Candelaria downed tools in the country.

China’s industrial production gained momentum to rise a forecast-beating 6.9% in September from a year earlier; excavator demand has jumped, along with car sales. Fiscal stimulus, an imminent five-year plan that will boost clean energy investments, and an expansionary monetary policy are all supporting the recovery. Meanwhile, an appreciating yuan has increased consumers’ purchasing power.

China’s influence is hardly new — or surprising, given it’s the only major economy the International Monetary Fund expects to see expand in 2020. In industrial metals, though, this year has marked a significant increase in its clout. The country now accounts for more than 50% of demand in nickel, steel, copper and aluminum, analysts at BMO Capital Markets say — a level that only Japan has ever come near, and China’s North Asian neighbor peaked at less than 15% of global volumes.

Indeed, China’s dynamics have been enough to put copper back on a rising path after a short-lived drop earlier this month, when U.S. President Donald Trump was diagnosed with coronavirus. That’s partly because inventories are still close to historic lows, making the price more likely to swing on supply hiccups, like Lundin’s disruption. But it also hints at a market watching the macroeconomic signals rather than output specifics, and expecting China, which has already imported more copper than it did in 2019, to keep on spending its way through post-pandemic convalescence.

The five-year plan is set to include ample sums for electrification, clean energy and electric cars, which use four times as much of the metal as a standard vehicle. They are already forecast to make up the bulk of copper growth over the next decade or so, along with charging infrastructure. Then there are the aggressive decarbonization ambitions. All of that, and hopes of a spending spike in the fourth quarter from the likes of State Grid Corp. of China, explains the persistent net long positions among money managers in CME copper, up again, according to the latest Commitments of Traders Report. There are fewer bears out there, too, compared to much of early 2020 and 2019.

The bigger question is whether that is enough to hold the metal at or close to current levels, especially if China’s rush begins to fade before the rest of the world recovers, or before Beijing’s five-year plan and its green ambitions rev up. A price consistently above $6,000 is also more likely to encourage companies to approve new projects, as they did after 2017, analysts at CRU Group pointed out in a September study. Cashed-up diversified miners and even iron ore-focused diggers may pile into copper acquisitions with greater enthusiasm, too.

Still, supply is unlikely to be the immediate cause if the rally does stumble. The reality is that even at lower prices, miners have been eyeing up deals for some time, given the metal’s gleaming green-economy prospects. Unfortunately, theory is easier than practice. Anyone needing a reminder could do worse than consider BHP’s Olympic Dam copper operation in Australia, where ambitions and scale have shrunk again this week. It’s a far cry from a vision that once included the world’s largest open pit.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and local lender Khan Bank are supporting the operations of Mongolia’s leading dealer in heavy duty machinery, Wagner Asia Equipment (WAE), which supplies specialised equipment to the country’s main industry, mining.

In a joint transaction, Khan Bank is providing a loan of up to MNT 84 billion (US$ 29 million equivalent) to WAE, while 33 per cent of the risk on the loan will be shared by the EBRD under a risk sharing facility signed between the two financial institutions.

The funds will allow WAE, a fully owned subsidiary of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed heavy equipment dealer Barloworld, to finance working capital needs, helping the distributor to cope with the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on its operations. Providing funding in local currency will also limit WAE’s exchange rate risks.

In Mongolia, the EBRD works to help build a diverse economy by developing the private sector and supporting infrastructure improvements. The Bank has invested more than €1.8 billion in 113 projects in the country since it started operations there in 2006.

First batch of 4,000 sheep donated by Mongolia have arrived at Erenhot, North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, on Thursday after passing 30-day quarantine.

Mongolian President announced the donation of 30,000 sheep to China during his late-February trip to China to support the fight against COVID-19. The rest of the sheep will arrive in China in mid-November, and will be transported to Central China's Hubei Province, hard-hit earlier this year amid the COVID-19 outbreak.

"This is to convey the wishes of the Mongolian government and people to Hubei residents who have made great contributions in the fight against the coronavirus," said Zhao Lijian, spokesman of Chinese Foreign Ministry, on Thursday during a press briefing.

The donation embodies the unswerving support of Mongolia for the fight against COVID-19 of the Chinese government and people, which vividly illustrates the concept of building a community with shared future for mankind, and highlights the profound friendship of the two countries and two peoples, said Zhao.

Netizens commented on Twitter-like Chinese Sina Weibo that this should be the world's first "sheep diplomacy."

Netizens thanked Mongolia for the friendly support, and for the delicious food made from the sheep.

"On behalf of the residents of Hubei, I would like to thank Mongolia. And I will travel there," wrote a Weibo user Qingshuiyumo.

[I'm] so moved not to tears but to slobber, said a Sina Weibo user named CC Moli Expelliarmus. And the message got a lot of admirers, saying they cannot wait to enjoy the mutton in Hubei.

The Mongolian sheep have been on the list of hottest topics and most searched hashtags on Sina Weibo during the past months, which was evident that Chinese gourmets have been eagerly waiting for the sheep.

Per capita mutton consumption reached 3.76 kilograms in 2019, and the total consumption volume reached 5.18 million tons, up from 5.08 million in 2018 and 4.94 million in 2017, per official data.

According to industry analysis platform chyxx.com, the consumption of mutton is expected to rise gradually. China will consume 5.3 million tons of mutton this year, and is expected to eat 5.41 million in 2021 and 5.5 million in 2022.

China's total meat demand will reach 100 million tons by 2020, but the total output of meat will be 90 million tons, with about 10 million tons to be filled by imports, said the Ministry of Agriculture.

As for mutton, 406,112 tons of mutton is expected to be imported to China in 2020, per chyxx.com

The number of COVID-19 infections has risen to 328 in Mongolia after one more Mongolian citizen tested positive for the virus, the country’s National Centre for Communicable Diseases (NCCD) said on Thursday.

All 328 confirmed cases have been imported; among them, 312 patients have recovered from the disease.

Mongolia has not reported any COVID-19 related death or local transmission so far.

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. Ulaanbaatar city’s Property Management and Administration Department announced on October 20 a public auction sale for Khangarid Palace, currently owned by the Capital City Governor’s Office.

The minimum opening bid is MNT 43,423,400,000. Bidders must place a deposit equal to ten percent of the starting bid – MNT 4,342,340,000 to the State Fund account of Ulaanbaatar city prior to the auction, which will take place on November 20, 2020.

Built in 2008, the 15-story Khagarid Palace is a purpose built office located in the very heart of Ulaanbaatar city and has a total area of 9774.7 square meter and parking spaces for 10 automobiles. The building currently houses the Capital City Governor’s Office and other government organizations under the administration of Ulaanbaatar city.

The right to own the Khangarid Palace was granted to the Capital City Governor’s Office in 2014 upon a resolution by the Ulaanbaatar city Mayor and Governor.

In April 2018, then-Mayor of Ulaanbaatar city S.Batbold was ordered by the chairs' meeting for the Citizens’ Representative Khurals of Ulaanbaatar to launch study and develop a plan on moving the Ulaanbaatar city administration from downtown to Yarmag area in the far western part of Ulaanbaatar city’s Khan-Uul District in a bid for decentralization.

And the construction development for a new complex building for administration of Ulaanbaatar city had started around that time in the Yarmag. It has been previously reported that the new complex building would serve as the headquarters for offices of the Citizens’ Representative Khural of Ulaanbaatar city, Governor’s Office, over 30 departments and agencies of Ulaanbaatar city.

In November 2019, the Citizens’ Representative Khural (local council) of Ulaanbaatar city decided to privatize several government properties through auctions, including the Khangarid Palace, former buildings for administrative offices of Khan-Uul and Sukhbaatar districts and others.

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. Quality certified insulation market is being created in Mongolia by the European Union’s Switch Off Air Pollution project. In the past, Mongolian people went to black market to buy insulation materials, mostly non-certified materials and do it themselves without following the Building Code Standards which in return ends up being not very efficient, often becoming a waste of resources. And this has been the common practice of “insulation” for Mongolians until now.

However, Switch Off Air Pollution project is trying to replace that common practices definition by certified insulation by putting together a market, where it links the customers or the ger area dwellers living in detached houses, with: good certified suppliers; project specialized energy advisors, MSMEs or craftsmen, financial institutions working with green loans; and certified energy auditors that warranty the quality of the work performance.

The project is forming a market mechanism with a demand and supply chain. It does not only benefit the public, but it also aims to guarantee fair and attractive revenue to all the actors involved to ensure sustainability. Based on the needs and financial availability of the customers, the project offers different insulation options. If insulated fully by the project, the house can be 70% energy efficient decreasing heat loss in the house by the same amount. The engineering behind this innovative service began with an well-structured baseline study to understand the market incentive and continuous research and adaptation based on arising needs.

The insulation market system works as follows:

House will be assessed by the energy advisors, who then will give insulation price offer depending on tailor-made options for the person’s house. The household can choose to pay by themselves or apply for Xac bank green loan at 8% of interest. If the person is eligible for the loan, the contract will be signed to indicate the beginning of the insulation work. Materials will be supplied and craftsmen will do it within a week. Once the insulation work is done, energy advisor will do the quality check and energy auditor will compute the energy audit. The person is eligible for green loan if they can prove their income by their social insurance book or tax record.

In order to simplify the process, families can go to www.dulaalga.mn to enter their house measurements and receive preliminary cost calculation of desired insulation and place on order for technical assessment by the energy advisors.

Up until now, there was little knowledge among the ger district residents that insulation plays a key role in energy efficiency thus leading to air pollution reduction. Therefore, the project is aiming to raise awareness on the energy efficiency and cost saving that properly done insulation can bring to households and disseminate knowledge to the people. Not only does the project raises awareness on the importance of good quality insulation, it also sees the lack of good quality insulation adding to the air pollution problems in Ulaanbaatar and hence it properly insulates houses to decrease the coal consumption in order to decrease air pollution in the short and medium term.

Accordingly, technical procedures including Technical Assessment and Quality implementation check form developed by the Switch Off Air Pollution project, were included in the newly amended Construction Codes and Standards on Building Envelope Thermal Insulation of Mongolia, that will come into force on January 1, 2021.

Switch Off Air Pollution is a pilot project with an aim to involve more actors in the future to develop the certified insulation market in the coldest capital city in the world.

About Switch Off Air Pollution:

Co-financed by the European Union under the Switch Asia programme, with additional support from Abbe Pierre Foundation, Czech Development Agency and the French Development Agency; the Switch Off Air Pollution project is being implemented by Geres Mongolia, in collaboration with Building Energy Efficiency Center of the Mongolian University of Science and Technology, Mongolian National Construction Association and People in Need INGO during the 2018-2021 period.

Project website - www.dulaalga.mn, and mobile application - Dulaalga on iOS and Android

About Geres Mongolia:

Geres is an international NGO with expertise in energy and development, with over 40 years of experience in Europe, Africa, and Asia improving living conditions of the people and fighting against the impacts of climate change.

Source: Geres Mongolia

The first batch of 4,000 live sheep from Mongolia to Wuhan, Central China's Hubei province, arrives at Erenhot Port in North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region, on Oct 22, 2020. [Photo by Guo Pengjie/for chinadaily.com.cn]

The first batch of 4,000 sheep from Mongolia's total donation of 30,000 live sheep to Wuhan, capital of Central China's Hubei province that was hit hard by COVID-19 earlier this year, arrived in China on Thursday.

The sheep entered the country at Erenhot Port in North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region, where they will undergo quarantine and inspection and will be slaughtered and stored within 14 days before they are transfered to Hubei province. A handover ceremony was held simultaneously in Zamyn-Uud in Mongolia and Erenhot.

To complete the transportation and handover, the Mongolian government has allocated $1 million through a special fund.

Sheep is the symbol of wealth and status in Mongolia, a nation dominated by animal husbandry. Donating sheep represents the best wishes of the Mongolian people.

"During a time of disaster, those who can put meat on your plate are not always the rich, but they must be anda (the Mongolian word for siblings)," this Mongolian proverb best captures the spirit of "a friend in need is a friend indeed".

Mongolian President Khaltmaa Battulga, the first foreign head of state to visit China since the COVID-19 outbreak, offered the donation of sheep to China during his one-day visit on Feb 27.

All sheep completed a 30-day quarantine before they were transported to China.