A joint venture between Aquila and CVRD, Peak Downs East is located 25km southeast of Moranbah in the northern part of the Bowen Basin. The project area is immediately down dip of BMA’s Peak Downs Mine.

Coal resources occur in the Q, Harrow Creek Upper, Harrow Creek Lower and Dysart seams within the Moranbah coal measures.

Aquila this morning released a JORC-compliant indicated and inferred resource estimate for the northern resource area of the project of 696Mt of in-situ coal resources. It said the resource was primarily of an inferred status as calculations were limited by the boundary of the Peak Downs East licence.

While there are further coal quality tests to be carried out, Aquila said there was hard coking coal potential for at least part of the project.

Aquila said earlier this year that Peak Downs East had the makings of a multi-seam longwall mine. It had scheduled a concept study and bankable feasibility study in the second half of 2007.

Aquila was trading up 2.73% this morning at $A5.65.