Churchill reports H1 E. Kalimantan coal project activity
Friday, March 28 2008 - 01:35 AM WIB
By far the most important development during the half year has been the emergence of the East Kutai Coal Discovery, located in Kalimantan approximately 110km north of Sangatta, as a discovery of potential world-class size.
Churchill acquired a 75% stake in the project during 2007 and since then has been aggressively drilling the area for sub-bituminous thermal coal.
Drilling initially started on 500 metre spaced centres to a depth of between 100m to 150m and rapidly defined a large north/west-south/east trending coal corridor. As announced on 30 January 2008, the company is in the process of an infill drilling programme (on 250m centres) across a 10km x 4km high priority zone and had calculated an initial volumetric calculation of around 140 million tonnes, as part of its 500 million tonne coal resource target for 2008, from this area. The data from the first part of the infill programme has been handed to independent experts SMGC for the calculation of an ongoing JORC compliant resource statement. First JORC numbers are anticipated to be released in April 2008.
Such is the potential scale of the EKCP discovery that in November 2007 your Board completed a ?10 million equity placement to institutional investors to fund a 65,000m drilling programme with the objective of delineating 100 million tonnes in reserves and 400 million tonnes in resources by the end of 2008. The money will also fund various mining and logistical scoping studies, and assisting Churchill to decide the project?s optimum extraction, product transport and financial parameters.
The new drilling campaign will be a mix of open hole and core drilling and will involve the use of 3 drill rigs and 200 support personnel. This programme is being managed by Jakarta-based consultants PT GMT and is led by ex-pat Australian, Brett Gunter. (end of excerpt)