Aspire said the agreement between Mongolia’s Ministry of Roads and Transportation (MRT) and JSC Russian Railways (RZD) was over expanding and modernising the Ulaanbaatar Railways (UBTZ).

“It was also agreed to investigate the expansion of railway in northern Mongolia from Erdenet past Aspire’s Ovoot project to the Russian border at Arts Suuri,” Aspire said.

The explorer said the proposed extension of railway from Erdenet, past the Ovoot project and linking into the Russian rail system to encourage transit freight from Russia, has implications for the development of the Ovoot project.

“Aspire and our subsidiary, Northern Railways, welcomes this important new rail agreement between Russia and Mongolia that explicitly recognises the Ovoot coking coal project as a key user of this new rail transit corridor,” Aspire managing director David Paull said.

“This agreement officially puts rail in the north of Mongolia on the map.

“Northern Railways continues to be in close contact with UBTZ with regards to working together through the next steps and a joint development of the Erdenet to Ovoot (Northern Rail Line) section.”

The rail push involving Mongolia is part of broader objectives to allow Russia to rail up to 20 million tonnes per annum of rail freight into China through Mongolia by 2020.

Aspire is initially targeting 5Mtpa of coking coal production at Ovoot in 2018 and was granted a mining licence for the project more than two years ago.