President of Russian oil giant, Rosneft Oil Company and Chairman of the Management Board, Igor Sechin, had a three-hour stay in Mongolia on March 17th. Igor Sechin was believed to come to Mongolia to make further moves into Mongolia`s oil market.

In his three hours stay in Ulaanbaatar, Mr. Sechin managed to meet President Ts.Elbegdorj, Prime Minister N.Altankhuyag and Minister of Mining D.Gankhuyag.

According to the official website of Rosneft, Mr. Sechin discussed with government officials of Mongolia about cooperation to increase petroleum supply and delivery of packed bitumen products from Angarsk Petrochemical Refinery to Mongolia and the possible cooperation on oil exploration.  Also the website states that parties negotiated to create both task forces to formulate and complete the project.

Last year, Rosneft delivered 700,000 tons of petroleum, or 54 percent of Mongolia`s total consumption of petroleum products for a year.

According to the official website of the Ministry of Mining Mongolia, Mr. Sechin is quoted as saying: “As shipping oil by rail is expensive, Russia is ready to sign a long-term agreement on supplying oil products via a pipeline from Russia to Mongolia.”
It also reports that both sides exchanged information reciprocally on the issue and agreed to study the proposal.

Mongolia has import petroleum from Rosneft for over a decade. There was even a time when Mongolia was 100 percent dependent on petroleum imports from Rosneft. Rosneft also provides 80 percent of the diesel needed by Ulaanbaatar railway and airlines.

With 1.3 million tons of petroleum consumed, Mongolia has the ambition to build its own oil refinery plant. The proposed oil refinery plant will have the capacity to process 20 million tons of oil per year. The plans for the refinery are to import crude oil from Tamsag deposit in Mongolia as well as Angarsk in Russia.