The readout came from the Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources through Montsame at 09:56 Ulaanbaatar time and from ikon.mn about 40 minutes later. Minister Gongoryn Damdinnyam met Zhou Xinhuai, whom the ministry names as CNPC's general director. The place of the meeting is not stated.
The agreed line is short. CNPC will supply 10,000 tonnes of petrol, 4,000 tonnes of aviation fuel and 3,000 tonnes of diesel in September. The ministry has also asked for 5,000 tonnes more of AI-92 and 20,000 to 30,000 tonnes of diesel this month, then 10,000 tonnes of AI-92 with 30,000 to 40,000 tonnes of diesel in October. CNPC, in the ministry's words, expressed that it would respond favourably. A favourable response is a promise of an answer, not a tonne.
Measured against the book, the September petrol is a sixth of the roughly 65,000 tonnes the fuel headquarters' bulletins have implied for the month, and the diesel is 2% of about 150,000. In the first week of September the country took in 19,853 tonnes of AI-92 across all routes, by the headquarters' count of 8 September; the Chinese parcel is 3.5 days at that pace. August's national book closed 8.4% short on petrol, 74,780 tonnes ordered against 68,502 received, and in full on diesel.
The number also answers an earlier ask. On 8 August the prime minister, Nyam-Osoryn Uchral, asked the head of PetroChina's Daqing Tamsag venture for a regular 12,000 to 15,000 tonnes of AI-92 a month, with 6,000 tonnes already arranged for August, and sent the industry minister to China within the week. A month later the September figure is 10,000, with 5,000 pending.
What the ministry put around the tonnage is the part that will outlast the shortage. The two sides agreed to move fuel supply onto a long-term contract with a volume, a price formula the readout calls transparent and understandable, and a system tied to rail logistics, working with CNPC and PetroChina International. They agreed to redraw the 2026 to 2030 investment and production programme for the Toson-Uul XIX and Tamsag XXI blocks in Dornod, to drill new wells, re-evaluate reserves and study raising annual output to 0.8 to 1 million tonnes. They agreed to invite CNPC into 1 or 2 new exploration blocks, and to write feedstock for the refinery and coal chemicals into the same memorandum.
A favourable response is a promise of an answer, not a tonne.
Read together, the two lists trade in opposite directions. Products in, crude out. Mongolia buys products by the thousand tonnes and offers to lift the Dornod blocks' output toward a million tonnes a year. The fields the programme names are worked by PetroChina's Daqing Tamsag venture, the company the prime minister approached for petrol on 8 August.
The price line is blank. In August the prime minister asked PetroChina for prices below the international market; Thursday's text promises a formula and does not print one. The tonnages are the ministry's; the monthly book is the headquarters' series; this text does not add one to the other.
The second reading of the budget amendment sits on Monday 14 September, the Budget Standing Committee on Friday; the Russian regional conference opens in Ulaanbaatar the same Monday, the venue Putin named in Bishkek on 1 September. Between them the ministry has given the September shortage a Chinese tonnage, after August's 6,000, and a Chinese memorandum that reaches 20 years out. The tonnage is 4.5 days of petrol at last month's rate. The memorandum is where the price will be written.