Yeah, pipeline routes -- but what else have they got to take advantage of?-click the map image to enlarge-
It looks like the worse of Utah-Nevada-Wyoming rolled into one, without any US govt. water projects - or not yet. "Tourist" images below.
It's not Afghanistan, it's not Iraq, it's Pakistan. The tribal areas.
There's mineral wealth, Asia Times reporting yielded this extended excerpt:
Miners bank $3bn on Baloch project
Jul 3, 2009 --- By Syed Fazl-e-Haider
QUETTA, Pakistan - Canada's Barrick Gold and Chile's Antofagasta plan to invest up to US$3 billion in a copper and gold mine at Reko Diq in Pakistan's southwestern province of Balochistan. This will be the single-largest foreign investment in Pakistan in the fiscal year that started on July 1 and is larger than the $3.32 billion of total foreign direct investment for the first 11 months of the 2008-09 fiscal year.
Security concerns are deterring foreign investors from putting their cash into Pakistan. Poor and sparsely populated Balochistan, already home to native insurgent groups seeking a greater say in local affairs, has also recently become a new focus of the US "war on terror" as it spills over from neighboring Afghanistan.
The financial benefits that might accrue from the Reko Diq site are overcoming these concerns. Rights to the nearby Saindak copper project, in the same district of Chagai, have already been sold to the Chinese on a 10-year lease.
Critics say that the government in Islamabad blundered by selling what may be the world's biggest untapped copper and gold deposits, worth over $100 billion, to foreign mining firms at a throwaway price, to the disservice of the people of the country's most backward province and economy.
Tethyan Copper, a joint venture between Barrick Gold and Antofagasta, one of the world's largest copper miners, has been granted an exploration license for the Reko Diq site. Tethyan, formerly a subsidiary of Australia's Mincor Resources, has a 75% interest, and the Balochistan government holds 25%.
"We think the investment is probably going to be between $2.5 billion and $3 billion," Reuters quoted Cassie Boggs, chief executive of Tethyan Copper, as saying on Tuesday when the investment was announced. "Here in Pakistan, all the current events make security a concern but we actually believe security is manageable."
Boggs said the company would continue to weigh the benefits against the risks but felt the project had a lot of potential for its investors and for Pakistan. Ore reserves at the site are estimated at 4 billion tonnes, of which 0.5% is expected to be copper, with 0.29 gram of gold per tonne of ore, according to Boggs. [...],
[...] As a result of extensive drilling in the Reko Diq area, about 167 million tonnes of copper ore reserves have been proved.
Someone has to "prove" what's there, in the vast nowhere, and so it is. Here are photos, a flavor of what life at the frontiers of mining looks like:
Asia Times' report continues:
In the international market, each stage of copper production is tradable from copper concentrate, smelted copper and blister copper to refined copper or pure copper. Copper is currently being sold at an average price of US$4,000 a tonne in the world metal market. [...]
Critics have questioned why the authorities did not refuse the transfer of the Reko Diq project from the internationally reputed BHP Billiton to the Tethyan, which raised funds for the project by floating its shares in the Australian Stock Exchange after acquiring the project. They say that failure has deprived the country of a 75% stake in the vast untapped deposits.
Read the original. There's more. The word "Iran" even shows up, interestingly adjacent to the word "copper." With billions and billions of tons of ore, it's "Reko Diq," so don't call it "Rinky Dink," not with all that money on the table to be mined by civilized nations.
We are not alone with trucks as white as OJ's Ford Bronco. (Nor alone with PhotoBucket and Flikr.) It's Globalistan, these days. If you've cash to sit at the table and play the game.
Doesn't it look like the wedding church location in Kill Bill? That desolate.
_______________________
Photos from here, here, here, here, here (this site). Map from here.
"We are family" composite at left, from here.
.
.
.
__________UPDATE____________
Lest you think the Afghan incursion is only about poppy fields, oil pipelines, and exploiting humongo copper and gold mines [you Iron Rangers take note, don't be envious]; there is more lore about why we care about a land-locked place where the Soviets got their come-uppance, why there is a CIA community and national interest in the land and its snow-capped Hindu Kush mountains; consider this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this. Happy Independence Day. George Washington grew hemp. Biggest current cash crop in Hawaii, bigger than pineapples, probably biggest in California. It brings in the lettuce. Last thing -- An interesting blog I'd not seen before; Afghanistan editorializing, here and here; plus other stuff. Have a look.