The Alberta Crown coal leases cover 3616 hectares with most of this ground adjacent to Coalspur’s Vista South Project.

Drilling is underway in the project to provide an initial resource estimate with 20 rotary drillholes targeting three areas.

Further north, the company’s Vista coal project already holds more than 905 million tonnes of resources with 812.6Mt in either the measured or indicated category.

“Our ongoing assessment of the geological information for the VSP has highlighted the prospectivety for coal in the new areas that we have been able to secure from the Alberta Coal public offering process,” Coalspur managing director and chief executive Gene Wusaty said.

Back in mid-June, Coalspur bought six leases for its Hinton project in Alberta for $C90 million, adding 438 million tonnes of resources and a mining permit to the mix.

The Hinton project was subsequently renamed as the Vista project.

Coalspur was previously planning a 7.4 million tonne per annum run-of-mine thermal coal operation for its open cut Hinton project, exporting 4Mtpa saleable coal over a minimum mine life of 14 years.

Shares in the company are unchanges at 83.5c this morning.