Indus Coal reports excellent progress of drilling program at Block 9
Thursday, August 8 2013 - 06:16 AM WIB
ASX-listed Indus Coal Limited said that progress on the 9,000 meters HQ core drilling program at Block 9 of the Jambi Coal Projects is continuing with excellent results. To date the 8 drilling rigs have completed 32 holes and another 8 holes are currently in progress.
The company said in a statement Wednesday that completed coal outcrop mapping across Block 9 identified 19 coal outcrops in total. The most significant of these is a 9-12m thick vertical outcropping seam over a strike length of 4.5km x 1.5km wide (Coal Seam A).
Subsequent exploration by Indus geologists has confirmed that there are several coal seams stratigraphically below the original Coal Seam A outcrops.
Drilling is continuing with four Jacro 200 and four Jacro 300 machines using full and touch HQ coring. Coal seam samples have now been recovered from 32 holes with the most recent being the following 12 holes: DH011, DH021, DH022, DH024, DH025, DH027, DH038, DH039, DH041, DH041RD, DH043 and DH044.
Correlation of coal seams from geological logs indicates that seams are quite consistent in location and stratigraphic position along strike and down dip.
?The results from holes 11, 38, 39, 41, 43 and 44 are very pleasing. They extend the strike by a further 1.5km. The strike is now 6km in length and I have now directed additional rigs to drill holes in the south-east in order to follow this Coal Seam A as it extends south-eastwards, said Executive Director of Indus Coal, Vinay Hariani said in the statement.
?I am looking forward to the release of our maiden JORC statement on Block 9 within the next 30 days,? he added.
Indus is working with GMS Mining & Infrastructure on the mining engineering and the completion of a Feasibility Study for the opening of a coal mine on Block 9 which produces 2MT of thermal coal per annum. Preliminary mine planning has commenced by modeling a first open pit in order to mine coal over a strike distance of 2.8 kilometres in length (between holes 30 and 37) across a width of about 500 metres.
Editing by Reiner Simanjuntak