West Coast coal miner Bathurst Resources, which faces three Environment Court challenges, has upgraded its estimated coal resources around the Denniston plateau by 12% to almost 82 million tonnes.
Dual-listed Bathurst, which is targeting 2 million tonnes of premium hard-coking coal for export by 2013, released its quarterly report to December last week, outlining a 76% increase in coal sales of 78,141 tonnes for the period.
Coal sales during the quarter were $A10.2 million ($NZ13.2 million), but after exploration, production and development costs, net operating cash flows saw a loss of $A2.93 million booked.
Bathurst shares were unchanged after the announcement, trading on the NZX at 95c.
Actual production saw 21,500 tonnes taken from its Cascade mine, adjacent to the Escarpment area on the Denniston plateau, destined for export to Asia, and a further 50,200 tonnes from the Takitimu mine near Nightcaps, for sale in Southland and Canterbury.
Bathurst was granted more than 20 conditional consents from the West Coast Regional Council and Buller District Council last year, but aspects of these are to be appealed by three separate parties through the Environment Court.
Appeals were lodged by the Forest and Bird Protection Society, West Coast Environmental Network and the Fairdown-Whareatea Residents Association; the latter concerned with coal stockpiling adjacent to homes as opposed to the overall mining project.
There has been some mediation already with the residents association, and a pre-hearing conference is scheduled to be heard in Christchurch on February 13, before any court hearing, to establish timetables and submission items.
During the quarter, Richard Tacon was appointed chief operating officer for Bathurst.
Mr Tacon studied at the former Otago School of Mines and has worked in the New Zealand and Australian coal industries for the past 20 years, most recently with Centennial Coal in Australia, which had six mines producing 10 million tonnes of coal annually.
