News

November 25, 2009

Altona Energy Closes A Deal With China’s Third Biggest Oil Company To Develop A Huge Australian Coal Resource

By Charles Wyatt

A jump of 30 per cent in the share price greeted the news that Aim-traded Altona Energy has at last signed up to a joint venture with CNOOC New Energy Investment for the development of its Arckaringa coal project in South Australia. The reaction in the shares is not surprising, as Arckaringa is a huge coal project in South Australia, with a resource estimated at around 7.8 million tonnes. In spite of that, Altona is still capitalised at less than £ 20 million. It therefore needs a big partner with the reputation, expertise and funding to get some real impetus behind what chairman Chris Lambert believes is one of the world’s biggest undeveloped energy banks. It has certainly found just such a partner in CNOOC, as CNOOC is one of the three largest state owned oil companies in the Peoples Republic of China. More than that, it has proven expertise in coal-to-liquids technology, which converts coal into more environmentally clean and manageable energy sources including gas and synthetic fuels.

The coal-to-liquid process involves two major stages, gasification to produce synthetic gas rich in hydrogen and carbon, and liquefication, where the synthetic gas is put over a catalyst to produce high quality, ultraclean, synthetic fuels and chemical feedstocks. CNOOC-NEI already has plenty of experience in synthetic gas, so there is no great learning curve to climb. In fact coals-to-liquids is a prime example of clean coal technology - the associated combined cycle units produce negligible...