Australia's export credit agency says the fact procurement work for the massive Oyu Tolgoi expansion will be conducted from Rio Tinto's Brisbane office should help small Australian contractors to win their share of work on the project.
The federal government's Export Finance and Insurance Corporation (EFIC) was this week confirmed as one of 20 lenders behind a $US4.4 billion ($6.1 billion) debt package for the Mongolian mine expansion, with EFIC contributing $US150 million. 
The loan was the first by EFIC on a large resources project since the agency was given a stricter mandate to focus on small and medium sized enterprises, and came as export credit agencies in Canada and the US also participated. When asked whether Australian contractors could be crowded out by the involvement of the Canadian and US export credit agencies, EFIC managing director Andrew Hunter said there were several reasons he was confident Australian companies would win their share.
"A lot of the procurement on this project is being led out of Brisbane, and the lower Australian dollar relative to a couple of years ago is making our mining services companies a lot more competitive," he said.
"We are the one that has done the greatest level of due diligence on small and medium sized enterprises ... We have a very high degree of confidence that this project is going to subcontract a lot of work back to some very highly specialised and very successful Australian companies," he said.
EFIC's executive director David Graham said the loan contained covenants that required certain amounts of Australian content on the expansion.
"We have put in place some covenants that will assist Australian small and medium sized companies participate," he said.
"We have a remedy in there." The agency believes more than 200 companies have already won $US83 million worth of work on the first stage of the Oyu Tolgoi mine, which started operating in 2013.
The second stage contains most of the value in the project, and has an official mine life of about 40 years.
When asked how many Australian companies he expected to win work on the second stage expansion, Mr Hunter said; "it's a substantial number".
The Oyu Tolgoi loan is easily the largest commitment made by EFIC this financial year, with the previous 19 worth a cumulative amount of $US51 million - $US29 million of that in a single loan.
It is believed the loans from EFIC and the Canadian export credit agency were on 14-year terms, with interest rates 3.65 per cent above LIBOR while the mine expansion is being built, and then 4.65 per cent above LIBOR after the mine is completed.
That puts EFIC's rates among the cheapest in the syndicate, with a Rio subsidiary saying the overall cost of the entire finance package was 6 per cent above LIBOR.
Shaw and Partners analyst Peter O'Connor said the interest rates looked reasonable. "The rates look relatively attractive to us, especially given the traditional premium for a project facility versus a traditional bond or bank debt, and given the country risk and project risk," he said.
"Importantly, the facility tenure is very long term (12 to 15 years) and debt is contained within the project.
"Project cash flows [will be] utilised to retire debt and make interest payments," he said.
Key points
A lot of the procurement on the project is already being led out of Brisbane.
The loan has covenants that require certain amounts of Australian content.