Asia has enormous reserves of coal, amounting to nearly three-fifths of the world’s total, but they are unevenly distributed. The largest reserves are found in Siberia, the Central Asian republics, India, and especially China; Indonesia, Japan, and North Korea have smaller but nevertheless economically important reserves. China has chiefly high-grade coal reserves. Every province has at least one coalfield, but the largest reserves are in Shanxi and Shaanxi in the Ordos River basin in the north. Sichuan, Shandong, and the Northeast (Fushun, in Liaoning province) are old coal-producing regions with good reserves, and a coal-mining area with large deposits has been developed in central Anhui, north of the Yangtze River (Chang Jiang). Mines in Ningxia and Gansu supply northern industrial plants, but their reserves are not clearly known. The long-known reserves in western Hebei are being exploited.
Enormous coal reserves are found in North and Central Asia, and some 200 fields have been worked throughout the region. Most of the known coal supplies of North Asia lie in Siberia, but the total extent and quality of Siberian deposits have not been fully explored. The Ural Mountains are not rich in coal, but there are some small fields of lower-grade coals. The Kuznetsk Basin in south-central Siberia has become a giant producer. The Minusinsk Basin in the central region of western Siberia, the Kansk region to the north along the Trans-Siberian Railway, the Cheremkhovo area west of Lake Baikal in south-central Siberia, and the Bureya River basin in the southeast also are the major areas of Siberian production. Many smaller deposits have been worked to supply local regions, such as the small and scattered fields north of Vladivostok and on Sakhalin Island in the Far East. The Qaraghandy fields in east-central Kazakhstan contain the largest deposits in Central Asia; during the Soviet period, however, mining was not expanded there after sources of better coals began to be worked in western Siberia. The Ekibastuz field, north of the main Qaraghandy fields, also is a producer of high-quality coal. Smaller deposits also are worked in Uzbekistan, as well as in the valleys of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The Chinese and Indian economies in particular have depended heavily on coal, and their coal consumption has grown along with their industrial economies since the late 20th century. Concern has been raised by environmentalists about the possibility that increasing coal consumption in these two countries would raise global atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.
At least two-thirds of the world’s known crude oil and natural gas reserves are found in Asia; the proportion may prove higher as Siberia, the Caspian basin, and the seas of southeastern Asia are further explored. Many of the island chains bordering eastern Asia have geologic formations favouring petroleum accumulation, and oil fields—both on land and offshore—are in production in the Indonesian islands of Sumatra, Java, and Borneo and in China, Brunei, and Malaysia. Western Asia has the largest known oil reserves, located in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Iran, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. Other regions in Southwest Asia have limited amounts of oil, and known petroleum reserves on the Indian subcontinent are small as well. However, significant deposits of natural gas were discovered in Bangladesh during the 1990s.
Malaysia is the only important oil-producing area on the mainland of Southeast Asia, although offshore waters may yield production after further exploration; Vietnam also has some offshore potential. The area of the South China Sea has been actively tested, but disputes among the surrounding countries about sovereignty over the Spratly Islands has inhibited development. The Philippines is negligible as a producing region, and the petroleum production of Japan is also small. North and South Korea appear to have virtually no prospects of production, but China has a number of oil-producing fields in the provinces of Sichuan, Gansu, and Xinjiang and in the Northeast. The Qaidam Basin in northwestern Qinghai province also is a producing region. Some oil has been derived regularly from oil shales found in the Northeast, and natural gas is exploited in Sichuan and in the Northeast.
Siberia produces more natural gas than Southwest Asia and is a significant oil producer as well. The flanks of the Ural Mountains have a number of large oil fields and small gas fields. The rich gas field in the northern Ob River basin at Berezovo indicates that the entire Ob basin may yield natural gas. In the east the Lena River basin, north of Yakutsk, also contains large gas reserves.
Azerbaijan and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia also possess large deposits of oil and natural gas. Much of this is centred in the Caspian basin, particularly in areas claimed by Azerbaijan. The capital, Baku, has become a new world centre for oil exploration. The reserves, which the former Soviet Union hardly noticed, may prove to be substantial. Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan share in Caspian output. Uzbekistan has a major gas field at Gazli in the Kyzylkum Desert southeast of the Aral Sea and oil fields in the southeastern part of the country. Although the landlocked region is not as remote as Siberia, its oil and gas producers have debated whether to export production to the world market through Russia or to build pipelines across Iran to the Persian Gulf, across the politically unstable Caucasus region to the Black Sea, or to the Mediterranean ports of Turkey.
Reserves of uranium ore are found in Asia’s ancient crystalline rocks. The richest ore fields are found in Kyrgyzstan, between Osh and Tuya Muyun. China and India have their own deposits. Chinese uranium resources are thought to be in northern Xinjiang and southern Hunan provinces.
Many regions of Asia have deposits of iron ore, although not every country has its own domestic supply. South Korea, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, and several smaller countries in Southwest Asia appear to have only small iron ore supplies. Japan has far less than is needed by its large iron and steel industry and depends largely on imported supplies. The Philippines exports ore. Malaysia produces a considerable volume. Thailand, Myanmar, and Pakistan have fair amounts of relatively low-grade ores, and Vietnam and Turkey have good ores in substantial volume. Indonesia and India both have large deposits of good iron ores that are reasonably distributed.
Although China formerly was regarded as deficient in iron ores, huge quantities of varying grades of ores have been discovered that are widely distributed and often located close to coal supplies. Regional centres of ore mining, smelting, and fabrication are located at Anshan in Liaoning province; near Beijing; in southern Anhui, west of Shanghai; in central China, east of Wuhan; in southern Inner Mongolia, north of Baotou; in central western Gansu; and on Hainan Island, off the southern coast. Large iron ore deposits also occur near Chongqing. Iron ore in small local volumes is widely located in Guizhou and Yunnan in the southwest. China now ranks among the world’s major producers of iron ore.
Iron ore long has been extracted from the Ural Mountains, and there appears to be a virtually unlimited supply of low-grade ore in the Qostanay Basin east of the Southern Urals in northwestern Kazakhstan and southwestern Siberia. Large deposits of medium-grade ore have been found northwest of Lake Baikal, close to the Cheremkhovo coal deposits. Smaller deposits have been located in several locations in eastern Siberia. In Central Asia the main deposits are found in eastern Kazakhstan.
Asian resources of nickel are not extensive. There is a notable ore field at Norilsk, in north-central Siberia; Indonesia, China, and the Philippines also possess reserves and produce substantial quantities of nickel. Asian countries with reserves of chromium include Turkey, the Philippines, India, Iran, and Pakistan; reserves are also found in northwestern Kazakhstan. Manganese is found in abundance, with large reserves in Transcaucasia, Central Asia, Siberia, and India; Chinese reserves also are considerable. Southern China has exceptionally large deposits of tungsten. Tungsten reserves in Central Asia also are important, as are those of molybdenum.
Nonferrous base metals
Asia is not richly endowed with copper. In Central Asia the main sites are Olmaliq, southeast of Tashkent (Uzbekistan); Zhezkazgan, west of Qaraghandy; and Qongyrat, on Lake Balkhash (Kazakhstan). In Siberia, production is mainly from the Kuznetsk Basin. Japan’s once widespread copper ore reserves are no longer worked, and the Philippines has limited reserves. China has deposits in Gansu, Hebei, Anhui, and Hubei, but production is insignificant. Turkey, Myanmar, Malaysia, Mongolia, India, and North Korea have small reserves.
Significant reserves of tin exist along a north-south axis running from southwestern China through the Malay Peninsula to Indonesia. Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos, and Yunnan province in China also have deposits of tin. Siberia has substantial reserves in Transbaikal and also in the Sikhote-Alin Mountains of the Far East.
The largest reserves of lead and zinc in Asia are located in the Kuznetsk Basin of Siberia and in central and eastern Kazakhstan. China also has abundant deposits of zinc and lead ores, and North Korea has important lead resources.
Asia has enormous reserves of bauxite. The largest fields are located in Kazakhstan and in south-central Siberia in the Sayan Mountains. There also are large deposits in India, Indonesia, Turkey, and Malaysia, as well as significant reserves in China.
Important quantities of mercury occur in south-central China and in Siberia. Magnesite is common in Asia. There are large deposits of antimony in central China; Turkey and Thailand also have substantial reserves.
Many Asian countries have produced gold from alluvial stream deposits in past centuries, and some have continued to do so. Small volumes of alluvial gold are produced in Myanmar, Cambodia, and Indonesia, and the headwaters of the Yangtze River in the Tibetan border region yield some gold. India formerly was a large producer of gold from lode mines, but the best ores appear to have been exhausted. North and South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines have significant gold ore reserves and periodically produce gold from small lode mines.
Gold has been produced from Siberian lode mines in the Central Ural Mountains for centuries, and in the 19th century there were several gold rushes to work alluvial stream deposits farther east on the Lena and Yenisey rivers. Siberian gold production is now considerable, and lodes are worked in several locations, centring on the upper reaches of the Kolyma River in the northeast. In addition, platinum is mined near Norilsk in the Central Siberian Plateau in northern Siberia. Another major lode is in eastern Kazakhstan at Auezov, south of Semey.
Nonmetallic minerals
Reserves of asbestos are localized; it is abundant in China, in South Korea, and on the eastern slope of the Central Urals in Siberia. Mica is abundant in eastern Siberia and is also found in large quantities in India. Asia has vast reserves of rock salt, but the hills and “glaciers” of salt in southern Iran have not been exploitable. Deposits of sulfur and gypsum are abundant in Central and West Asia. Japan has large reserves of sulfur. Kazakhstan has large deposits of phosphates in the Tupqaraghan Peninsula on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea and other scattered deposits of lesser value. Diamonds are produced in east-central Siberia and in India. India and Sri Lanka are significant producers of rubies, sapphires, and many semiprecious stones, such as moonstones and agates. Myanmar and Cambodia also have important supplies of rubies, sapphires, and other gems.
Asia’s water resources constitute a vast potential, both for generating hydroelectricity and for irrigating crops. Water is important for irrigation in many Asian regions that are either arid (as in much of Central and Southwest Asia), subject to long dry seasons because of pronounced monsoonal (seasonal) variation in rainfall (as in much of South and Southeast Asia), or subject to seasonal high water and floods (for example, from the spring snowmelt in Siberia, the Himalayas, and the mountains of Central Asia). Other regions, such as Indonesia, are particularly susceptible to longer-term climate variation, such as that caused by the El Niño phenomenon.
The management of water has been a prime focus of Asian peoples since the earliest civilizations were established on the continent; perhaps the most graphic expression of this is the Islamic tradition of building a garden in the desert, complete with splashing fountains. As ever-larger dams have been built, however, resistance has increased from opponents concerned with the environmental and social harm that such dams can cause.
Siberian rivers have an excellent hydroelectric potential, for when dammed they provide low falls with an enormous flow volume. However, the extreme cold temperatures of winter freeze lakes and streams and keep water levels low for much of the year, which hinders exploitation. The Far East, with its abundant precipitation and great differences in water level, has an immense generating potential, although the remoteness of eastern Siberia has discouraged industrialization.
East Asia’s waterpower potential varies by region. Japan, a mountainous country whose short rivers have steep drops but relatively small volumes of water flow, has already harnessed much of its hydroelectric potential; generating capacity, however, is increased by heavy rains, particularly in summer. The waterpower potential of northern China is extremely limited because the flow of the Huang He and other northern rivers is erratic and because these rivers carry heavy volumes of silt. The hydroelectric potential of China south of the Qin (Tsinling) Mountains, however, is great.
The Yangtze River has considerable waterpower potential. The Three Gorges Dam project on the central Yangtze near Yichang, construction of which officially began in 1994 and was largely completed in 2006, has been the largest and most ambitious attempt to harness this potential. The dam created a vast reservoir and locks that facilitate ship transport upstream and is intended to control the river’s periodic flooding. The dam also has the capacity to generate 22,500 megawatts of hydroelectricity. However, the project attracted considerable controversy. Flooding the river basin submerged numerous cities, towns, and villages and several sites of archaeological and cultural interest, and it necessitated resettling more than a million people in a region with a shortage of available land.
The hydroelectric and irrigation potential in South Asia also varies by region. In Pakistan nearly all agriculture depends on the Indus River and its tributaries in the Punjab, and the waters of the Indus basin are highly regulated, with numerous barrages and canals providing water for irrigation. The Western Ghats, which slope down abruptly to the western maritime plains, would theoretically allow dams to harness water flowing down the steep slope; however, the rivulets that rise on the summit have an insignificant volume of flow in winter. Rivers on the eastern slope of the Deccan plateau, such as the Mahanadi and the Godavari, lend themselves to the construction of low dams with great volumes of flow, as also do the Himalayan rivers entering the Gangetic Plain. Nearly all of the highly seasonal rivers of peninsular India have been dammed. One exception was the Narmada River, where work began in the 1990s on the first in a series of 30 large dams. Construction of these dams has been vigorously opposed by environmentalists both within India and internationally.
The Himalayan ranges represent one of the world’s greatest “water towers,” with rich possibilities for utilizing steep drops for generating hydroelectricity. During the summer monsoon the heaviest precipitation on Earth falls there on the highest mountains. Nepal has a vast theoretical hydroelectric potential. Environmentalists worry that earthquakes in this seismically active region could cause the dams to fail. Some also argue that large dams might themselves instigate earthquakes, because the weight of the water in reservoirs could press on faults in the mountains and because water under pressure lubricates faults. Engineers, however, believe that they can address these problems. An obstacle to such development is the fact that the Ganges (Ganga)–Brahmaputra basin spans five countries—China, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Bhutan. Power, irrigation water, and flood control would benefit India and Bangladesh most, but the sites of the projects would be mostly in Nepal and Bhutan.
In Southeast Asia the Mekong passes through six countries; again development has been stalled by regional political difficulties. In arid West Asia water politics are highly serious, as shown by the tensions among Syria, Israel, and Jordan over the use of the Jordan River. Another dispute, between Iraq and Syria on the one hand and upstream Turkey on the other, concerns the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, whose headwaters lie in Turkey. Turkey had already built several dams, including the Atatürk Dam, on the two rivers, and construction has been underway on two more dams on the Euphrates, at Birecik and Kargamış, since the 1990s. Iraq and Syria have objected strongly to both projects, because they feared that the water supply would be reduced, that they would not be able to control water-flow timing, and that the quality of water would be diminished. Concern was also raised that water issues might give rise to future armed conflicts within the region.