The private company has established two subsidiary companies, with Hancock Coal looking after Alpha Coal and Hancock Galilee responsible for Kevin’s Corner. Each project aims to produce 30 million tonnes of thermal coal.
Lying directly north of the flagship Alpha Coal project, Kevin’s Corner has a total JORC resource of 1.45 billion tonnes with 475Mt in the indicated category and 977Mt inferred.
In a presentation at Informa’s Queensland Coal and Energy Conference last month, Hancock Coal project director Paul Mulder revealed the company aims to boost total JORC resources at Kevin’s Corner to 2.5Bt, including 225Mt measured, 925Mt indicated and 1.35Bt inferred.
Kevin’s Corner is shaping up to be a surface and underground project, with Mulder saying it would be an open cut operation similar to Alpha Coal, complemented with four longwall operations.
“With commencement of its environmental impact study, the Alpha project is the most advanced project in the Galilee Basin,” Mulder announced yesterday.
“Kevin’s Corner has submitted its draft terms of reference to government and we hope to move into an EIS in the not-too-distant future.”
Alpha already holds 2.6Bt of total resources, including 848Mt measured, 1.2Bt indicated and 569Mt inferred.
“Both of these mines have the critical mass to support stand-alone rail and port infrastructure, a fact that the Queensland government has acknowledged in enabling these and other Galilee projects to proceed through the formal environmental and commercial development processes,” Mulder said.
“These are clearly very large, high-quality deposits in a premium location of the basin. Within the deposits there is also potential for liquefaction and gasification, which may provide us with the opportunity to investigate coal energy conversion technologies in regard to reduced emission energy creation.”
Like Waratah Coal’s China First project in the Galilee Basin, which is poised to gain $US3.1 billion of Chinese investment, Hancock’s projects need considerable infrastructure development.
Hancock is looking at expanding Abbot Point’s capacity.
“Abbot Point is our preferred port location for the projects and we are investigating construction and operation of a port and materials handling facility with capacity to handle more than 60 million tonnes per annum, with further planning allowing for significant future expansion of the terminal. There are a number of options available to Hancock Coal at Abbot Point,” Mulder said.
“We are also investigating options for construction and operation of a rail link from the mines to Abbot Point. The mines’ prefeasibility studies have considered a new, dedicated multi-user rail system.”
While Hancock has been linked to financing discussions in China, and more recently with Coal India, Mulder said the company was currently conducting bankable feasibility study bridging work for Kevin’s Corner.
“We are communicating with potential end users interested in participating in equity for the project, combined with long-term offtake agreements.
“We believe this approach is able to best ensure the interest of all long-term equity participants is catered for throughout the mine and logistics design process.”
Last month, Mulder said both the Alpha and Kevin’s Corner projects had an estimated capex of $A3 billion for the open cut and longwall mine development, while construction and operation of a rail link was estimated to cost $2.5 billion.
He said the construction and operation of a port and materials handling facility with a minimum 30Mtpa capacity was estimated to cost $2 billion, but this was prior to the current investigations into expanding capacity at Abbot Point.
Each project will have an estimated fly-in, fly-out operational workforce of 1500-2000 when at full production.
Construction is estimated to employ 2500 for each project.
Gina Rinehart, Australia’s richest woman and the daughter of the late, Western Australian iron ore mogul Lang Hancock, is a partner of Hancock Prospecting.
