Linc said the tenements cover an area of more than 10,000 square kilometres, and has suggested they have coal deposits in excess of 5 billion tonnes.
The energy company added it had duly discontinued exclusive negotiations with Chinese coal group Yanzhou and its related entities.
Various media reports have suggested Yanzhou was in takeover negotiations for Felix Resources last year and the company already runs the Austar longwall mine in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales.
“Linc has decided that, though negotiations have been ongoing, the buyer’s timetable to complete a purchase is no longer in the best interests of Linc Energy and its shareholders,” the company said.
“With interest from potential bidders increasing and the overall confidence in the coal sector improving significantly, Linc Energy views the best mechanism for delivering value to shareholders for these assets would be via a competitive sales process conducted by UBS instead of continuing the existing negotiation.”
The development of the Galilee Basin recently received a boost, with Waratah Coal inking a memorandum of understanding with China Metallurgical Group Corporation for the China First joint venture to develop a $US5.15 billion, 40Mt per annum mine in the area.
Another private company, Hancock Prospecting, also has a billion-dollar project that would bring necessary infrastructure to the Galilee Basin.
Linc’s Galilee tenement is within mineral development licence application 372, and the company has recently announced an exploration target of 3.0-3.4 billion tonnes in the area with 1.6-1.9Bt available for open cut extraction to a depth of 120m.
Linc said its Emerald tenement includes exploration permits EPC 980, EPC 1226 and EPC 1267, and has an inferred resource of 852Mt containing both coking coal and thermal coal.
The company said about 200Mt of the deposit could be mined through open cut methods, including 8-Mt of coking coal.
The Pentland tenement is within MDL application 361 and permit EPC 526.
Linc said the area contained a total thermal coal resource of 266Mt, including 176Mt at the indicated status.
Both the Pentland and Emerald acreage lies close to established infrastructure.
