help with coal quality, page-64

Thanks for the input psi; you have explained yourself to us all like a true geo!

zx65, thats probably not the worst thing to do on your part, but let me warn you about something. Directors of companies are prone to sugar coating stories. Don't always take what they say as being the gospel truth. Let me give you an example. There are plenty of tales I could bore you with, but I'll briefly discuss the story of another developing coal company so we are looking at apples and apples.

There is a stock on the ASX that has told the world for many months now that they are going to turn their Botswana coal prospect into a productive project selling export grade coal. No, I am not talking about AFR or CCC or HDG. The coal that 'this' stock owns that I am referring to, has an average insitu calorific value of 11MJ/kg and an ash content of 52%, with the lower quality of their two main seams having an ash content north of 60%. In other words, the coal is of a pathetic quality. I struggle to see how it will be beneficated to anything remotely required for economic domestic sales, let alone export sales. Yet, despite this, every presentation and report released by the company on the project continues to ramp its potential. I am truly staggered that someone has not intervened with the company to ask them for further testing. There are people on HC who are trusting the words of the directors running the company, rather than listening to an independent voice that is free from any emotion attached to the company.

If you want to know what stock I am referring to, have a read of the below linked thread. You might need to put a (www) in front of hotcopper depending which way you log into the site.

http://hotcopper.com.au/post_threadview.asp?fid=1&tid=1444388&msgno=6641407#6641407

The take home message is not to compare AVA with TVN, but to realise that the directors of a company will go out of their way to sell a story, even if sometimes there is a lot of hope and wishful thinking tied in with it. By all means, ask the directors of TVN what they think, but it would be foolish for you to 100% trust their opinion on the grades of the coal until extensive feasibility studies have been undertaken on the prospect.

I'm not going to rule out TVN's coal from having export potential, but I will say that there is a long way to go yet.