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Kyrgyzstan
Natural Resources
Soviet geologists have estimated Kyrgyzstan's coal reserves at
about 27 billion tons, of which the majority remained entirely
unexploited in the mid-1990s. About 3 billion tons of that amount
are judged to be of highest quality. This coal has proven difficult
to exploit, however, because most of it is in small deposits deep
in the mountains. Kyrgyzstan also has oil resources; small deposits
of oil-bearing shale have been located in southern Kyrgyzstan,
and part of the Fergana oil and natural gas complex lies in Kyrgyzstani
territory. In the Osh region, four pools of oil, four of natural
gas, and four mixed pools have been exploited since the 1950s;
however, the yield of all of them is falling in the 1990s. In
1992 their combined output was 112,000 tons of oil and 65 million
cubic meters of natural gas, compared with the republic's annual
consumption of 2.5 million tons of oil and 3 billion cubic meters
of natural gas.
Kyrgyzstan's iron ore deposits are estimated at 5 billion tons,
most containing about 30 percent iron. Copper deposits in the
mountains are located in extremely complex mineral deposits, making
extraction costly. The northern mountains also contain lead, zinc,
molybdenum, vanadium, and bismuth. The south has deposits of bauxite
and mercury; Kyrgyzstan was the Soviet Union's main supplier of
mercury, but in the 1990s plummeting mercury prices have damaged
the international market. A tin and tungsten mine was 80 percent
complete in 1995. Kyrgyzstan had a virtual monopoly on supplying
antimony to the Soviet Union, but post-Soviet international markets
are small and highly specialized. Uranium, which was in high demand
for the Soviet Union's military and atomic energy programs, no
longer is mined in Kyrgyzstan.
The Soviet Union's largest gold mine was located at Makmal in
Kyrgyzstan, and in the Soviet period Kyrgyzstan's 170 proven deposits
put it in third place behind only Russia and Uzbekistan in gold
production in the union. Two more promising deposits, at Kumtor
and Jerui, have been discovered. Kumtor, said to be the seventh-largest
gold deposit in the world with an estimated value of US$5.5 billion,
is being explored by the Canadian Metals Company (Cameco), a uranium
company, in a joint-venture operation. Gold deposits are concentrated
in Talas Province in north-central Kyrgyzstan, where as much as
200 tons may exist; deposits in Makmal are estimated at sixty
tons. Deposits adjacent to the Chatkal River in the northwest
amount to an estimated 150 tons.
The terms of the agreement for Kumtor exploitation with Cameco,
which gains one-third of profits from gold extraction, caused
public concern in 1992. To improve control of the mineral-extraction
and refining processes, and to address the uncontrolled movement
of precious metals out of the country, President Akayev created
a new administrative agency, Kyrgyzaltyn (Kyrgyzstan Gold), to
replace Yuzhpolmetal, the Soviet-era body responsible for precious
metals. In January 1993, Akayev also brought the country's antimony
and mercury mines into Kyrgyzaltyn. The latter are especially
important because mercury is used to refine gold. Control of the
mercury mines makes more likely the realization of Akayev's hope
that Kyrgyzstan will become more than just a supplier of raw materials.
Although Kyrgyzstan has one of the largest proven gold reserves
in the world, in the early 1990s fuel and spare parts shortages
combined with political disputes to hamper output (see Government
and Politics, this ch.). Production in 1994 was 3.5 tons, but
the output goal for 1996 was ten tons.
Kyrgyzstan's major energy source, water, has also been discussed
as a commercial product. The export of bottled mineral and fresh
water was the object of several unrealized plans in the mid-1990s.
Data as of March 1996
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