TBAR sits adjacent to the company’s flagship Bumi Barito Mineral coal project in Central Kalimantan.

“Although TBAR had never been explored in the past, we had an idea that there was strong potential to find coking coal based on the coal geology we delineated in BBM, which lies to the north,” Cokal said in a statement Thursday.

“These initial results confirm our interpretation of the geology of the basin and we are confident of finding further undiscovered metallurgical coal in the region.”

Cokal said although the mapping had covered only about 25% of the TBAR tenement area to date, the results were very encouraging with a number of outcrops measuring between 1.75m to 1.85m in thickness.

Channel samples of each coal outcrop were acquired and subsequently analyzed to give an indication of the coking potential of the TBAR coal.

“The laboratory results on these initial outcrop samples confirm our expectations that the coal seams in TBAR will have premium metallurgical properties,” Cokal executive director Pat Hanna said.

“Some results confirm the outcrops are in fact coking coal with crucible swelling numbers of 8 and 9, which is unusual to find when the coking properties are expected to have been oxidised.

“This indicates that the depth to which Cokal may find fresh premium coking coal could be as little as 5m below the surface.”

Hanna said the company was progressing geological mapping, with the aim of completing the survey within the next three months.

Following that, Cokal will drill shallow boreholes near the outcrops to confirm their coking properties.

Deep stratigraphic boreholes will also be drilled to identify the stratigraphic sequence and number of the seams.

It is hoped the program will provide enough information to develop an initial JORC resource.

The TBAR project will be able to utilize the infrastructure associated with BBM, including the shallow river barging in the Upper Barito River, while the haul road used to take BBM’s coal to the port passes through TBAR.