EL 28/2008 for Langloh near the town of Hamilton and EL 27/2008 for Avoca over 50km southeast of Launceston were granted by Tasmanian Energy and Resources Minister David Llewellyn.

Spitfire said gaining the tenements satisfied the final remaining condition required by the company for its acquisition of the privately owned Black Rock Energy.

“Spitfire reached a conditional agreement to acquire Black Rock in May of this year, these conditions being the granting of the exploration licences, completion of due diligence and receipt of final regulatory approvals,” the company announced to the Australian Securities Exchange.

“Now that these conditions have been met, Spitfire will proceed to complete Stage 1 of the acquisition which involves the issue of 10 million ordinary Spitfire shares to the vendor shareholders of Black Rock.

“Stage 2 of the acquisition will involve the issue of a further 10 million ordinary Spitfire shares to the vendor shareholders of Black Rock or a payment of $2 million in cash (or a mixture of both) at Spitfire’s election on the delineation within two years of not less than 25 million tonnes of black bituminous coal either within one of the tenements or across all of the tenements combined.”

The Langloh coal project has a JORC-compliant in situ inferred thermal coal resource of 10Mt within the licence while Spitfire said the Avoca project licence area contained known coal seams which were worked historically and explored by companies including Shell and WMC in the 1970s and 1980s.

The Ouse and Sandfly properties of Black Rock’s portfolio remain subject to EL applications.

Spitfire chairman and managing director James Hamilton said the company could now complete the Black Rock acquisition and start onsite evaluation activities to develop the foundation of a thermal coal export business.

“The next steps at Langloh include conducting some test work to assess the quality and characteristics of the coal,” Hamilton said.

“We are continuing to plan our longer-term exploration and evaluation program, which will commence next year.

“At the same time, we have begun discussions with potential strategic partners for this project.”

He said the company would also take into consideration the exploration commitments of its South Woodie Woodie manganese project in Western Australia along with the current financial and economic environment when advancing its coal strategy.

Spitfire shares remained flat at 13c so far this morning.