Officials said it had received the preliminary results of its June testing from retained consultant SGS Colombia.
The samples were taken from NCR’s mine in Guaduas, Colombia, and the drill program for the property could be available sometime this week.
“Of the nine samples analyzed, seven were very high quality coal and two were lower quality coal,” NCR said.
“The company is extremely pleased with the first two samples, which showed high grade anthracite values with an 80% fixed carbon content, 0.64% sulfur, and 9.5% ash.”
It is not satisfied with the two lower-quality results, and is awaiting SGS’s formal report to determine their location as well as potential extraction methods.
The company, which feels most of its coal is coking to semi-anthracite in rank, cited an American Geological Society paper Coal Resources of the Americas that stated the middle Guaduas, where it was working, was characterized “by thick beds of shale that are subdivided by sandstone and good concentrations of mineable coal beds, which make this unit the best coal producer", and that "thermo metamorphic action changed the rank” of the beds from bituminous to meta-anthracite.
NCR president John Campo said the company was “very encouraged by these results since Anthracite sells for two or three times as much as bituminous coals and is used in the metallurgical, chemical, and manufacturing industries,” president John Campo said.
SGS Colombia is completing the National Instrument 43-101-compliant drill program for NCR's wholly owned La Tabaquera mine in Guaduas, Colombia.
NCR will retain an international drilling company drill the holes according to the plan.
SGS will then return the core samples to its laboratory for drill hole database management services, provide a topographic survey and perform geological mapping to provide the miner with the direction of where to begin production.
NCR has already submitted a works plan to the National Mining Agency. Once the environmental impact study is submitted, officials said it believed it would be able to receive approval of its environmental license, which is the last step before beginning production.
