The program will include five large-diameter diamond coreholes and up to eight reverse circulation holes, with core samples collected to be used for washability testing to determine plant yield and coking characteristics.

The company will fast-track the project to a prefeasibility study on completion of the drilling program.

The drilling will focus on the project’s north and south blocks, which together contain 66 million tons of the total 90Mt resource and determined by the project’s recent preliminary economic assessment to be economically viable.

Jameson chief executive officer Art Palm said up to 300kg of composite samples would be collected from the large-diameter core.

“The prime objective of the program is to carry out washability testwork on the core samples to determine plant yield as well as develop a definitive understanding of the coking properties of the clean coal product,” Palm said in an announcement Monday.

“The company anticipates drilling to be completed by mid-September and intends to advance the Crown Mountain project through to prefeasibility commencing in Q4 2013.”

Environmental baseline studies including hydrology testwork are continuing and additional testwork required for the environmental approvals process is being initiated.

The installation of a climate station as well as wildlife studies would be carried out before year-end, Palm added.

Jameson’s 90%-owned project in British Columbia is expected to produce 1.3-1.9 million tons per annum of clean metallurgical coal from approximately 3.2Mtpa run of mine coal, supporting a potential mine life of 24 years.

The funds were raised through a placement of 13.125 million shares at 20c each to sophisticated and institutional investors.