Merril Lynch to offtake Ilthabi?s entire coal production

East Kalimantan coal miner PT.Ilthabi Rekatama said commodity trading unit of US investment banking giant Merrill Lynch will act as offtaker of future coal production from the company?s Pakar mine, which is scheduled to start production in July 2008.

CEO Ilham Habibie told reporters on Tuesday that under the deal, Merrill Lynch would off take all of the company?s production, which will be planned at around 5 million tonnes per annum, for the first 4.5 years.

Merryl Lynch, together with several private investment fund, had loaned US$135 million to Ilthabi in September 2007. According to Ilham, Merryll Lynch also has some some stake at PT.Ilthabi Bara Utama that runs the Pakar mine.

Habibie said the mine has JORC compliant mineable reserves of 270 million tones and resources of 3.3 billion tonnes, with CV value of between 4,800-5,000 Kcal/kg.

Ilthabi has appointed Clough Limited through its Indonesian subsidiary PT.Petrosea to carry out construction works for the mine.

According to Habibie, the company will order seven self- propelled barges with capacity of 10,000 tonnes to transport the coal.(alex)