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Tenement acquisition gets messy for Macarthur

MACARTHUR Coal’s planned acquisition of mineral development licence 162 in Queensland’s Bowen Basin, which could host a promising project, is facing legal delays after a liquidator was appointed to one of the tenement owners.

Blair Price
Tenement acquisition gets messy for Macarthur

MCG Resources, a subsidiary of mining and construction services group MCG, along with another company, Fortrus Resources, both struck a deal to acquire the tenement off power generator Stanwell Corporation in August.

Macarthur agreed to provide these parties with a $360 million loan to execute this purchase back on September 1.

Under the deal, Macarthur would also gain 90% of MCG Holdings (60% MCG Resources, 40% Fortrus), which successfully purchased the tenement.

More recently, Macarthur gained Foreign Investment Review Board Approval to convert its large loan into shares of MCGH, but execution of this process has hit a roadblock.

The Queensland coal producer said a liquidator had been appointed to MCGH.

On March 31, Fortrus filed an application to Queensland’s Supreme Court to wind up the holdings company.

“Macarthur intends to vigorously oppose the winding up application with respect to MCGH and to proceed to effect the conversion,” the company announced on Friday.

“Following conversion Macarthur will indirectly hold a 90 per cent interest in MDL162 and maintains its intention to develop the project.”

Yet to be given a formal project name, Macarthur previously indicated that the MDL162 project could produce both semi-hard coking coal and pulverised coal injection coal.

The tenement holds 221.7 million tonnes of resources and Macarthur aims to develop an open cut mine with first production after 2014, to be ramped up to 6Mt per annum run-of-mine.

Macarthur shares closed down 16c to $11.44 on Friday

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