Release: PTBA responds to Adaro's release on JORC compliance reserve

State owned mining company PT Bukit Asam has responded to the JORC Compliance coal reserve report on its exploration IUP submitted by Marston on March 22 on behalf of PT Mustika Indah (Mustika), the subsidiary of Indonesia listed PT Adaro Tbk, stating that it is not in accordance with the current legal process undertaken by PTBA that is requesting a judicial review on the Supreme Court Decision Letter No. 326.K/TUN/2006, dated May 10, 2007, through a letter released by their legal representative law firm Anton Dedi Hermanto and Partners.

It was stated within the letter that the overlapping concession areas started with the regent of Lahat's decision to release Decision Letters for a number of mining permits (KP) for different companies on a concession previously acquired by PTBA.

This had breached the Government Regulation 32/1969 Article 25 Sub-article 2 which stipulated Singular Right for KP/IUP Exploration Permit, which in PTBA's case, the exploration permit should be singularly given to the company.

In addition, the company stated, Mustika's IUP and other companies' overlapping IUP with PTBA's exploration permit were not included within the additionally released 373 'Clear and Clean' IUPs by the Indonesian government through the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources on March 2.

Due to this also, according to PTBA, the information released by Adaro has failed to comply with one of the key principles, 'transparency', in the 2004 JORC CODE for coal and mineral mining method, a resource reporting standard adopted by ASX.

PTBA specified that Adaro's report has breached the ethic code guideline 11 and 28 of JORC, which stated that coal resource estimation report must consider legal and governmental aspects, in which PTBA is still pursuing legal certainty on the matter and the Indonesian government has not declared the IUPs 'Clear and Clean'.(ends)