Looking back, I’m not really sure what I was thinking…
I suppose I was naïve to imagine a simple phone call to one of my high-placed contacts would land me a copy of this report.
I mean, with a price tag of $45,000, it’s not like copies are being handed out on street corners…
But I wasn’t about to let a little issue like that stop me.
It may have taken me three months of countless phone calls and digging through international archives I was lucky enough to gain access to, but I was finally able to procure what I imagine has to be the most important oil information of the past twenty years.
When I finally had a hard copy in my hands, I was like a little kid on Christmas morning. I couldn’t get the envelope open fast enough…
But when I did, I quickly realized the information inside was well worth the three-month fox chase I had just gone on.
A twenty-year-old goldmine
The report originally surfaced in 1991. It gave in-depth details of 150 exploratory oil studies conducted by Soviet, Hungarian, Romanian, German, and Polish geologists between 1939 and 1989.
It also showed these studies were done in a country that’s roughly three times the size of Texas and thousands of miles from the Middle East: Mongolia.
But most importantly, this report emerged at a time when Mongolia was finally ready to tap into its own energy wealth.
You see, for decades, Mongolia had been almost completely dependent on Russia to supply them with oil. In fact, 90% of the oil Mongolia needed for its daily operations came from its next-door neighbor.
Mongolia had become so dependent, the Russians basically charged whatever they wanted for the crude they were shipping to Mongolia.
Not only that; Russia also made sure to hit Mongolia with excise taxes, customs taxes, automobile taxes, and transportation and storage costs for every barrel of oil…
The picture wasn’t pretty.
Finally, when Mongolia realized how much oil was actually sitting beneath their own land, they came to their senses and passed the Petroleum Law of Mongolia.
This law — in the words of the report — “established a legal foundation for new development of petroleum exploration in Mongolia.”
And that’s no small deal.
According to experts, Mongolian land currently holds six billion barrels of oil.
Now, while that may not seem like a lot of oil, this news is welcomed with open arms by a country that’s experienced years of abuse from Russia…
And once the report I tracked down was compiled, companies lined up in droves — despite the extreme price tag — to get their hands on the information that would lead them to new, untapped sources of oil.
For years, companies used the information in attempts to find the biggest oil deposits in Mongolia.
Now, nearly two decades later… after endless data interpretation, area mapping, and 3D seismic surveys… the results are finally in.
And the findings are nothing short of remarkable.
Oil has been found throughout the Mongolian landscape, with one of the biggest fields (roughly the size of the state of Connecticut) sitting along the western border of the country.
The best part is that, now that the long, bitter Mongolian winter has come to an end and the land has thawed out, drilling is finally set to begin.
Look for more on how to make you oil fortune in this space next week.
Christian DeHaemer
Editor, Energy and Capital
