Cougar Energy (ASX Code: CXY) has lifted the JORC compliant coal resource at Wandoan in the Surat Basin in Queensland from a target of 200-300 million tonnes - to a whopping 341 million tonnes.
Of this, to date, 34 million tonnes are in the Indicated category and 307 million tonnes are in the Inferred resource category. Together this lifts Cougar's total JORC resource to 414 million tonnes.
With the increase, Wandoan's project economics will improve further with potentially longer life of the resource and large scale of the project.
This JORC compliant resource fulfils Cougar's criteria – a deposit with a potential commercial project life of 30+ years project life and maximum coal seam depths of 400 metres. It enables the company to plan the commercial development of its second major project.
Wandoan EPC 1118 is located in prime coal country, next door to the Cockatoo Coal tenements in the Surat Basin.
Cougar's flagship operation is the Kingaroy Power Station project in central Queensland. Cougar plans to utilise Underground Coal Gasification (UCG) at Kingaroy. The UCG process converts coal in-situ into a gas which can be used as a fuel for power generation or for conversion into a range of petrochemical products and gas-to-liquid solutions.The Kingaroy Power Plant (73 million tonnes) is planned to supply 400,000 homes with electricity for 30 years,
Cougar Energy CEO Dr Len Walker said: “this is a high quality coal resource upon which to develop a second UCG project with our UCG technology partner Ergo Exergy Technologies Inc. The coal deposit is in the same coal seam as the nearby Chinchilla deposit, where previous underground gasification tests were successfully conducted by Dr Michael Blinderman (Ergo Exergy CEO) and myself some 10 years ago. This gives us great confidence in the product gas we can produce from the site."
The Wandoan resource has an in-situ energy content in the region of 6,800 PJ.
Walker said Cougar had incorporated into the overall project plan a work program to determine the most appropriate chemical by-products to be produced from the syngas.