Atomic Resources adds additional thermal coal resources in Tanzania

Atomic Resources (ASX: ATQ) is to acquire two new thermal coal concessions in Tanzania to add to its coal resource inventory.

To date, Atomic has defined a 179M/t thermal coal resource at Ngaka in western Tanzania. A significant proportion of the coal mined at Ngaka will be sold to feed a proposed 400 Mw IGCC “clean coal” power station to be built at the Ngaka mine site.

The National Development Corporation of Tanzania will vend in the two new concessions at Mbamba Bay and Liweta. The new coal concessions have potential to add over 60 million tonnes of bituminous coal to Atomics’ growing coal concessions.

These will augment existing thermal coal projects at Ngaka, Muhukuru and the pending JV at Rukwa. Tancoal, which is now the largest private coal company in Tanzania.

The new concessions are located on the shores of Lake Nyassa in the mineral-rich western province of Tanzania, and lie within the same geological formation that hosts the Ngaka and Mcuhchuma coal fields.

Atomic Resources and the Tanzanian Government will own the concessions via a joint venture company.

At Mbamba Bay, previous work in the region by Harkness (1953) and others identified the coal at surface.

Based upon the main seam thickness of approx 2 metres seen in outcrop and dip determined from the outcrop sampled combined with the aerial extent of the basin, the company anticipates that a target potential tonnage of between 20 -30 million tonnes of moderate ash, low sulphur thermal coal with a calorific value exceeding 6,000Kcal/Kg lies within the offered concessions.

These estimates cannot be categorized as resources, in strict accordance with section 18 of the JORC Code, the potential quality is conceptual in nature and a resource has yet to be defined.

Further work is also required to determine if the coal seams contain any specialty coal such as metallurgical or coking quality.

Interestingly, the coal is within outliers of Karoo sediments within the main Mchuchuma Formation, the coal bearing formation at Ngaka and Mcuhchuma coal fields.

The Liweta concession is located 10 kilometres south of the Lake port of Mamba. The primary coal bearing formation is estimated from work on the exposed coal field up dip from the optioned concessions to be approximately 50 metres thick with up to 6 contained seams up to a maximum individual seam thickness seen in outcrop of 1.5m. Like Mbamba, further exploration is required including drilling to allow resources to be calculated.

Atomic will embark upon verification and validation of the historical resource estimate including confirmation of outcrop mapping for the region with an exploration drilling programme due for commencement later in 2009.

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