Ivanhoe Mines Ltd., building the Oyu Tolgoi project with Rio
Tinto Group, has said it may bring in another partner. “This is likely to have
another participant before it’s all over,” Deputy Chairman Peter Meredith has
said. “We’ve had a lot interest from other majors but our partner is Rio Tinto,
so we have to be respectful of what their dreams and desires are.”

Most huge copper mines have multiple owners, such as the
world”s biggest – Escondida in Chile
– so it would be natural for Oyu Tolgoi to have another partner. Ivanhoe said
in January it hired Citigroup Inc. to study options, including debt and equity
offerings and asset sales. The company wants to maintain control of the
project, Meredith said.

It may make sense for Chinese interests to study investment
in the mine, he said. SouthGobi Resources Ltd., a coal producer in Mongolia
57 percent-held by Ivanhoe, last year sold USD500 million of convertible bonds
to China Investment Corp., the sovereign wealth fund of the world’s most
populous nation.

“Mongolia’s
a fledgling place where the multiples haven’t reached the limits that you get
elsewhere,” Meredith told reporters. “If CIC or other folk were thinking of
investment, that’s probably a pretty good place to look providing the values
are there and the numbers are there.”