Chinese all over Surat BasinLike the diggings around Bendigo and...

Chinese all over Surat Basin
Like the diggings around Bendigo and Ballarat a hundred or so years ago

May be of interest Last paragrapgh especially

From The Australian Ive posted the whole story for you Buddy
(Buy a satellite dish with your windfall from Arrow!)

Greggy

MetroCoal secures Chinese partner

* Sarah-Jane Tasker
* From: The Australian
* April 09, 2010 12:00AM



EMERGING coal hopeful MetroCoal has signed a $30 million joint venture with a Chinese partner, the first in what it expects to be a list of similar deals.

Shares in the junior surged 28 per cent to 27c on the news.

The Brisbane-based company yesterday announced that China Coal Import & Export Company (CCIEC), a subsidiary of China National Coal Group, would take a 51 per cent interest in MetroCoal's Columboola project in the Surat Basin in Queensland.

MetroCoal chairman David Barwick said the company had been negotiating with China Coal for a year. "They have been clever in seeing the potential there is quite significant and have been clever enough to get in there first," he said.

The $30m from China coal would be used for exploring and evaluating the potential for future commercialisation options in the Columboola tenements.



Mr Barwick said interested parties had been "knocking on our door for quite a while".

"We had indicated to brokers and investors that we would be trying to put a joint venture together as quickly as possible to ensure that we could advance at quite a rapid rate," he said.

The transaction has been approved by the Foreign Investment Review Board but is subject to approvals from a number of Chinese government agencies, as will be the setting up of an Australian subsidiary company to manage the joint venture.

The Columboola area is only a small portion of MetroCoal's tenement holdings and CCIEC will have first right to enter into a joint venture over the other tenements.

Mr Barwick said MetroCoal was "working actively on advancing projects and deals. We do expect more to eventuate. We would not be doing our job if we stopped on one."

MetroCoal, which listed on the stock exchange in December, holds extensive coal tenements throughout the Surat Basin, which it has said it plans to commercialise through conventional coal mining and underground coal gasification.