In the last six months the company has spent significantly more than it spent in the previous half year on key Bowen Basin tenements, with a focus on high quality coking coal.

Exploration in central Queensland has found possible indications of underground hard coking coal resources at the Lenton project, where the company has a mining lease application over an open-cut deposit. The deposit is situated 2km east of Peabody’s Burton open-cut coal mine and a possible underground deposit is to the north of that.

The company said drilling had identified a structural repeat of the coal seams Burton is mining. The exploration target is a mix of open-cut coking and thermal coal, combined with underground coking coal resources.

The company said a recent borehole had intersected 3.2m of coking coal in the Leichhardt-Vermont seam, downdip from the open-cut deposits Burton is targeting, at a depth of 268m.

At New Hope’s Saraji East project exploration is targeting downdip coal seam extensions to the east of those mined at the BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance Saraji open cut mine, targeting underground hard coking coal resources.

The company said preliminary drilling has identified two potential coal mining horizons: the Upper Harrow Creek seam and the Dysart seam.

A 4.4m seam thickness has been identified in the Dysart seam and 3.7m thick in the Upper Harrow Creek at depths of 150m plus.

New Hope’s immediate focus is to prove up the resource base, said Dennis Brown-Kenyon, New Hope’s general manager, corporate development.