The company said Thursday that consultant Golder Associates turned in its initial study results for the project’s first phase of exploration a month early – and with some surprising revelations.

“Preliminary findings within the report may suggest that we shift our focus from coal to gold," president and chief executive officer Phillip Dias said.

He referred to a “desk top study” completed by the firm that involved collecting historical data, including 1991 and 2005 studies from the US Geological Survey, then overlaying them upon known maps and data points and making predictions based on that research.

“Based upon 1991 and 2005 USGS surveys, the land first was believed to contain a large quantity of high-grade coal and, while the land still may hold a great amount of metallurgical coking coal, this first phase of Golder's research has indicated it might be more beneficial to focus on gold instead,” he said.

Maxwell is exploring the area of the Raton where it has fee simple mineral rights. While gold and other minerals were part of its expected findings last year, the development phases were commenced to prove up gold, coal, other hard minerals, with the goal of pinpointing sites that could deliver the greatest return on investment.

Golder’s work in the first phase also examined the best potential targets for further investigation and transportation/access issues, if any, where the best mineral/coal/gold fields might be – as well as how extractable they are. Permitting issues and the market price of coal, gold, silver, and other minerals are also included.

“The next phase, Phase 2, will start in the spring, during which we will sample certain spots in order to analyze coal or gold samples to determine their quality,” Maxwell officials said, noting that the work should be complete by September of this year.

At that time, targets meriting further investigation will move on to a drilling and sampling program to verify the extent and quality.

Dependent upon Phase 2 results, Maxwell will call again on Golder to perform Phase 3, the compilation of a 43-101 report.

“Phase 3 should be complete by late 2013 or early 2014," Dias said.