Back in July, Cockatoo Coal, Posco and Korea Electric Power Corporation struck conditional agreements to acquire five coal projects from AAMC for a total of $580 million.

While the joint venture partners await FIRB approval before they can acquire the projects, Cockatoo outlined the proposed transaction structures in its recent quarterly report.

Under the plan, Posco will fully acquire the Sutton Forrest project from AAMC and will later transfer a 30% stake to Cockatoo.

Posco has been involved with Australia’s coal industry for years and is a major stakeholder of Macarthur Coal.

But the only South Korean company driving an underground coal project in Australia is Kores, with its $700 million Wallarah 2 longwall project under scrutiny from the New South Wales Planning Assessment Commission.

Cockatoo says the Sutton Forrest project in the Sydney Basin holds a deposit of 115 million tonnes of export grade metallurgical and thermal coal.

As a Queensland open cut coal producer, Cockatoo plans to fully acquire an Anglo subsidiary which owns 51% of the Collingwood, Taroom and Ownaview projects in the Surat Basin.

Cockatoo will keep majority ownership of the Taroom and Collingwood projects, but plans to transfer the 51% stake of the Ownaview thermal coal project to KEPCO.

Collingwood is the biggest project of the Surat Basin set with a deposit of 237Mt of export thermal coal, according to Cockatoo, while Taroom hosts 198Mt and Ownaview has 171Mt.

Japan’s Mitsui is the existing 49% JV partner of the three Surat Basin projects.

KEPCO has its eyes across the border on Anglo’s Bylong thermal coal project, which hosts 423Mt in the North West Sydney Basin.

South Korea’s biggest electricity provider plans to fully acquire this project and grant a three-year call option to Cockatoo so the Australian company could take a 30% stake.

Posco is the largest shareholder of Cockatoo with a 15.83% stake, while Kepco owns 9.15% of the Aussie coal company.

Cockatoo shares were up 1c to 54.5c on Friday.