Following two successful seam discoveries in the tenement’s rivers earlier this year, a May greenfields exploration traverse has discovered a third seam locality in the Budewa River.

The team went up the Amewa River from west to east across the midsection of the southern portion of the concession and found two additional outcrops close to the intersection of the two rivers, about 35km from the coast.

The team is exploring one of Orpheus’s four Papua tenements, its 49,340ha concession PT Daya Mega Pelita in the Waropen district, and has reaped “exciting” results.

The company’s preliminary greenfield exploration program, under the direction of Indonesian geologist Dr Maran Gulton, began in January.

The initial discovery of a roughly 1m thick coal seam in March in the northern part of the tenement led to further exploration in April, when a second traverse located a coal outcrop in the head waters in the northeast of the southern portion of the concession, separate to the initial discovery but possessing similar qualities.

The outcrop discoveries are all unrelated and Orpheus hopes they indicate the existence of multi-seam coal outcrops.

Orpheus said the entire outcrops offered the potential for strike length extensions, as well as for further “hidden” coal seams in the sedimentary strata gaps between localities, presenting the potential for thicker, higher-quality seams yet to be found.

The analysis of six coal samples taken from the seams identified revealed similar characteristics to South Kalimantan coal.

Across the seams, the average calorific value is 5055kcal/kg, with an average ash content of 6.63%.

“The follow-up discoveries at our tenements in Papua provide further confidence that the project contains significant potential,” executive chairman Wayne Mitchell said, adding that follow-up work was warranted and another team would start exploration in the next Orpheus Papuan tenement late next month.

This part of Papua has little in the way of infrastructure and services, but it does not concern Mitchell, who earlier in the year compared the region to Kalimantan two decades ago.

“Papua has the potential to be a new coal province, in many ways similar to South Kalimantan 20 years ago, and Orpheus is at the forefront of that potential development,” he said.

The Sydney-based, Australian-listed company already produces in Kalimantan and shipped 42,000 tons of South Kalimantan coal across April and May. It has already shipped 17,000t this month.