Mongolia is about as far from Vancouver as any other place on the planet, but that didn't stop Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. from believing that "an excellent opportunity" lay beneath its vast Gobi Desert, more than 8,200 kilometers away. In fact, the distance from home was one of the company's least concerns as it ventured into the relatively unknown, and certainly untapped, resources that geologists believed could be buried deep within an isolated country surrounded by China and Russia. Twelve years ago when Ivanhoe Mines gambled on Mongolia, and the word applies to far more than from a financial perspective, the company was truly venturing into unknown territories. The site of today's Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold operation (about 550 km south of the capital, Ulaanbaatar, and about 80 km north of the Mongolia.-China border) was once nothing more than a stony, wind-swept hill in the desert.
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