COAL SALE: Xstrata buys Talisman’s Sukunka deposit for US$500-M

BRITISH COLUMBIA – Xstrata Coal of Sydney, Australia, has agreed to pay $500 million for the Sukunka coking coal deposit belonging to Talisman Energy of Calgary. The deposit is located in the Peace River coal field in the northern part of the province. It is contiguous with the First Coal and Lossan properties acquired by Xstrata last year.

According to Xstrata the Sukunka deposit has a measured and indicated resource of 236 million tonnes of hard coking coal. Consideration has been given to developing a longwall mine.

Xstrata Coal chief executive, Peter Freyberg, said, “Based on our due diligence and technical analysis, Sukunka has the potential to be a high quality metallurgical coal mine. Once developed, Sukunka would meaningfully increase our exposure to hard coking coal, while unlocking synergies with our neighbouring assets in the Peace River coalfield and providing additional regional scale.”

Xstrata Coal (75% and Erdene Resource Development 25%) is also working on the development of the Donkin coal mine in Nova Scotia

The Xstrata website is at XstrataCoal.com.