In 2006, Cambodia's mineral resources remained, to a large extent, unexplored. Between 2003 and 2006, however, foreign investors from Australia, China, South Korea, Thailand, and the United States began to express their interest in Cambodia's potential for offshore oil and gas as well as such land-based metallic minerals as bauxite, copper, gold, and iron ore, and such industrial minerals as gemstones and limestone.[1]
The identified mineral resources in Cambodia were bauxite, carbonate rocks, natural gas, gemstones, gold, manganese, petroleum, phosphate rock, salt, silica, and zircon. With the exception of carbonate rocks and gemstones, the country's mineral resources were largely unexploited. To attract domestic and foreign mining companies to invest in the mining sector, the Law of Minerals Management and Mining of Cambodia was promulgated by the government on July 13, 2001.[1]