The project in British Columbia has been upgraded to a total global resource of 1.57 billion tons, including 16 million tons of measured, 553Mt of indicated and 998Mt of inferred resources.

Atrum technical director Eric Lilford says the size of the deposit is extraordinary.

“The coal is generally shallow and exhibits an exceptionally high rank,” he said.

“As one of the largest underdeveloped anthracite deposits in the world, Groundhog has the potential to be a strategic asset in the global metallurgical coal space.”

The company said the resource upgrade followed recent interpretation and resource modelling that combined all historical exploration data with results from its 2012 drilling and analysis program.

The 2012 program consisted of 15 diamond core drillholes for approximately 5000m and identified a number of coal seam intersections ranging from 1.5m to 8.2m in thickness.

The results include 415Mt between 0m to 100m depth and more than 90% of the global coal resource is between 0m and 300m depth.

Coal quality testing has confirmed that the Groundhog product is a high quality anthracite coal suitable for the metallurgical coal markets in Japan, Korea, China and the Americas.

Atrum said it would focus on advancing the resource base with infill, reserve definition and large diameter bulk sampling drilling in subsequent exploration campaigns.

It will be completed concurrently with comprehensive engineering and environmental baseline studies to facilitate project permitting.

The company has commissioned a conceptual economic assessment, which is likely to be completed late in the second quarter of 2013.