News

July 01, 2009

Altona Energy Now Has A Very Powerful Chinese Partner At The Arckaringa Coal-To-Liquids Project In South Australia

By Charles Wyatt

It has taken nearly a year for the Chinese company CNOOC–New Energy Investment to carry out due diligence on Aim-traded Altona Energy’s Arckaringa coal project in South Australia. Big and powerful companies tend to work slowly, but they are very thorough and Hong Kong listed CNOOC is among the biggest and most powerful – it’s China’s largest offshore producer of oil and gas. It’s also well integrated, as exemplified by the fact that it has recently completed the construction of its first major refinery in South China which is already operating at around 90 per cent of its 240,000 barrels per day capacity. Last Christmas Chris Lambert, chairman of Altona pointed out, “when you are dealing with major companies such as this, things may not move at a pace which suits a junior, but it is well worth a bit of patience.” Now, at last, it all seems to have paid off.

The original Memorandum of Understanding was signed in August 2008, but the Terms Sheet now signed is a major step along the road to agreeing an evaluation joint venture (EJV) aimed at the completion of a bankable feasibility study for a coal mine and integrated coal-to-liquids and power generation project at Arckaringa. Altona owns a 100 per cent interest in three exploration licences covering 2,500 square kilometres in the northern portion of the Permian Arckaringa Basin. These include three...