(MENAFN- ProactiveInvestors - Australia) Intra Energy (ASX: IEC) now has a coal inventory across its Tanzanian tenements of 523 million tonnes following an upgrade.
Tancoal Energy, an incorporated joint venture between Intra Energy and the National Development Corporation of Tanzania, has revised its JORC resource upwards to 423 million tonnes.
Meanwhile, Tanzacoal East Africa Mining, an incorporated joint venture between Intra Energy and Olympic Exploration, has defined a JORC resource of 100 million tonnes.
Importantly, the resource upgrade will now allow Tancoal to complete comprehensive mine planning and feasibility development for the South Ngaka Power Station project.
A substantial amount of shallow, high quality thermal coal has been defined within the Tancoal tenements, which supports the company's long term industrial and power generation plans for Tanzania and the Eastern African region.
To deliver the resource upgrade Intra Energy carried out substantial exploration throughout 2011 and 2012, completing 188 cored holes for a total of 14,206 metres.
The company engaged independent geological and mining services company, JB Mining Services, to complete a review of all geological data and resource evaluation.
While JB Mining reported a downgrade of resources for the Mbalawala Block from 251 million tonnes to 216 million tonnes, overall the JORC resource increased 69% to 423 million tonnes.
The drilling program has now moved to the Tanzacoal concessions to conduct further resource definition.
Mine expansion funding
Yesterday Intra Energy announced that subsidiaries Tancoal Energy and AAA Drilling had each entered into a Term Loan Facility for $2.5 million and $1.4 million respectively, with the National Bank of Commerce in Tanzania.
The funds will be used for expansion at the Tancoal Mine and the development of the Tanzacoal mine.
Intra Energy owns 70% of both Tancoal Energy and Tanzacoal East Africa Mining. AAA Drilling is wholly owned by the company.
Tancoal commenced trial production of high quality thermal coal in September 2011 with a target production of 3 million tonnes per annum by 2015 in a staged development.
Tanzacoal plans to begin trial mining at the end of 2012.
By 2018, both mines are expected to reach up to 7 million tonnes per annum capacity mainly for regional supply of power station fuel with limited export capacity.
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