The company said it was seeking to shore up access on the Blackwater rail system for Consuelo which it will be drilling in the coming months.

Aurizon has confirmed that International has been included on its list of future projects and will form part of its demand assessment and expansion process.

Exploration and development of Consuelo is targeting a production date of late 2016 to early 2017, with an exploration target of 800-1700 million tonnes.

“The discussions to date have given International’s management confidence that capacity will be available to meet our current development schedule,” the company said in a statement.

“The Consuelo project is well located close to an existing rail head on the Blackwater rail system at the Rolleston Mine, which extends to one of Queensland’s biggest coal export ports at Gladstone.”

Consuelo is 10km southeast of Glencore Xstrata PLC’s Rolleston mine and east of Bandanna Energy’s Arcadia deposit.

The project targets coal with semi-soft coking potential when washed in the Late Permian Bandanna formation.