Mongolia
Mongolia's ask at the summit it is paying to host is Gobi water
The national committee for COP17 met for the nineteenth time in Ulaanbaatar on Thursday morning, four days before the desertification conference opens. Mongolia has put 250 billion tugrik of state money into hosting it, about $70 million at the rate the desk logged on 5 August. What it wants out of the fortnight is financing to extend water supply in the Gobi.
Mongolia raises rates half a point, and the pumps come off rations on Saturday
The Bank of Mongolia’s monetary policy committee met out of turn on Wednesday and lifted the policy rate to 12.5%, with the reserve requirement for banks going up by the same half point. Hours later the fuel emergency headquarters said the purchase cap and the odd-even plate rule at the pumps end on 15 August. By the end of the working day the bank’s own site still showed the old rate.
The arithmetic of gratitude
On 15 August Ulaanbaatar's drivers stop queuing by their plate numbers and start driving by them. Peter Lidovsky on a city that has scheduled its relief and its restriction for the same morning.
Inflation reaches 13% in the country that counts petrol by the litre
Mongolia's July consumer prices rose 13.0% year on year, and the central bank called its monetary policy committee into an extraordinary session for Wednesday afternoon. The fuel ledger, meanwhile, is declared full for August, on Ulaanbaatar's arithmetic alone.
Mongolia's ministry publishes the Moscow promise, and Russia says nothing
The claim that Russia will send Mongolia an extra 25,000 tonnes of petrol this month moved on Tuesday from a minister's social account to his ministry's own website. No Russian institution has confirmed it.
Russia agrees to send Mongolia 25,000 more tonnes of petrol
Industry and mineral resources minister Damdinnyam Gongor met Russian energy ministry leadership and executives of Rosneft and Gazprom Neft in Moscow on Monday, and came away with a promise of 25,000 additional tonnes of AI-92 and 5,000 tonnes of jet fuel by 31 August. By his account, that ends the case for rationing.
Nine trips in a year: Mongolia’s fuel envoy starts in Moscow
The minister running Mongolia’s fuel crisis named his route on Sunday: Moscow first, then Kazakhstan, then Beijing. The itinerary carries its own message: whatever China agrees to supply, the system still runs through Russia.
Mongolia asks PetroChina for 12,000 tonnes a month
China agreed 6,000 tonnes of petrol for August. The prime minister wants that doubled and made standing, and he wants it cheaper.
Two in five people in Mongolia's fuel queue are counted twice
Mongolia's tax office says 40% of fuel customers are people who join one station's line and then another's. The ministry running the rationing is looking at doubling the purchase cap, possibly from Saturday.
Mongolia will buy fuel wherever it can find it
The industry minister says supply now outranks price in Mongolia’s fuel purchases. The zeroed customs duties have an end date, 1 February 2027, and the cabinet has cancelled its conferences and forums to pay for winter.
A queue timed to end when the guests arrive
Ulaanbaatar rations petrol by number plate until 15 August. The UN’s desertification summit opens there on the 17th. The gap between those two dates is the most carefully planned thing in Mongolia this month.
Mongolia zeroes its fuel taxes at the border
With rationing in force in Ulaanbaatar and 11 days to COP17, the cabinet has cancelled the excise on petrol and diesel and cut customs duties on every petroleum product to zero, giving up a revenue line to lower the cost of every imported litre.
Rationing meets high season in Mongolia
Mongolia’s tour guides went public on Wednesday with what fuel rationing is costing the strongest tourist season in four years. The UN’s desertification summit opens in Ulaanbaatar in 12 days.
Mongolia’s leverage lies in other people’s courtrooms
Shareholders in New York and Québec have twice put a price on the Oyu Tolgoi construction story. One settlement has been approved; the other awaits a hearing. Ulaanbaatar used that story once, in 2022, but has since left it in the drawer. A former government insider says it is time to take it out.
Mongolia rations the pump, and Bishkek pays double
From today Mongolian filling stations serve cars by the last digit of the plate, with each purchase capped at 50,000 tugriks, roughly $13. In Bishkek the cabinet orders tight control of a market where petrol now costs nearly twice what it does across the Kazakh border.
Mongolia queues for petrol two weeks before COP17
AI-92 stocks fell by nearly half in three weeks to 17 days of consumption, queues at the pumps run five and six hours, and the government’s answer is measured in storage tanks and years.
Ulaanbaatar brings dust storms to the COP17 table
Mongolia and UNESCAP will launch a regional initiative on sand and dust storms at COP17 in August, built with the Trilateral Cooperation Secretariat of China, Japan and South Korea.
Ulaanbaatar counts 4,127 delegates, and rations its traffic
Registration for the UN desertification conference COP17 reached 4,127 delegates, the state agency MONTSAME reported on 29 July, against the more than 2,000 it reported days earlier. The capital will run even-odd licence-plate restrictions from 15 August to 12 September.
Nowhere to put a bad week
The region has spent a decade building capacity to move things and almost nothing to hold them. July is showing what that costs.