The coal resource estimate has been completed by independent consultant Wardell Armstrong International. It is based on the review and modelling of more than 200 boreholes in and around the company’s coal exploration concessions.
That resource has been defined from 20 coal seams found at 624 metres to 1091m within the four coal exploration concessions.
The average coal seam thickness is about 1.4m. The seams range from 1m to 4.6m thick when averaging the borehole seam thicknesses, which exceed 1m.
The 200 historical core holes used for the resource calculation totalled some 200,000m of drilling. That drilling was done by various government agencies over the period from late 1960 to the 1980s.
A coal seam cut-off thickness of 1m has been used with no depth cut-off as the maximum depth does not exceed Polish legislation.
A 20m stand-off from the potentially water-bearing Jurassic strata unconformably overlying the Carboniferous coal-bearing was allowed. The exact width of this stand-off will be determined by hydrogeological studies at a later date.
In good news for Prairie, WAI found the coal quality of the area could be generally defined as high calorific coal with relatively low in-situ ash content. This means any coal mined there would likely require little processing.
The Lublin Coal Basin is an established coal province with mining activities dating back to 1982.
The area has established infrastructure including power and rail.
Prairie Downs’ project is located next to the Bogdanka coal mine, which is operated by Lubelski Wegiel Bogdanka.
LWB has been able to show the Lublin Coal Basin has the potential to host a generation of large scale coal projects. It recently expanded its production to about 8 million tonnes per annum of high quality thermal coal and is targeting 11.5Mtpa by 2104.
The Lublin Coal Project area was subject to exploration activities by the Polish Government and its agencies during the 1970s and ’80s.
These activities consisted of regional geological mapping and drilling programs and demonstrated the region was highly prospective and had the potential to host a large-scale thermal coal deposit.
Prairie Downs shares were about 69c in morning trade.
