Churchill doubles Indonesian coal project resource estimate
Friday, 22 May 2009
Mining Weekly quoted Churchill Mining as saying that the resource at its East Kutai coal project in Indonesia has more than doubled to 3.18 billion tonnes of thermal coal.
Included in this global resource was the previously reported joint ore reserves committee compliant resource of 1.4 billion tonnes. The balance was likely to be upgraded into Jorc compliant categories within a month, once final digital survey data has been processed.
Mr Paul Mazak MD of Churchill Mining said that “The new EKCP global resource catapults Churchill Mining to a new level in the coal mining industry in Indonesia. This result confirms our first impression since we started drilling in Kalimantan, that Churchill has discovered a huge new coal system, which ultimately will have a significant strategic value to power providers who require big volumes of coal supply.”
He added that the company continued to actively engage energy groups to progress its plans to mine the resource.
The new resource figure has exceeded Churchill’s initial 500 million tonnes target by more than 600%. Thus far, the company has defined a coal system 18 kilometers long and about 3 kilometers wide.
To date, 30% of the EKCP area has been drilled and the existing resource remains open along strike. The latest resource update was derived from a total cumulative drilling of 40 900 meters including 14 200 meters of open hole and 26 700 meters coring in 287 drill hole locations.
