mt mulligan

Have put together a brief history of MNM's Mount Mulligan Coalmine, considering the amount of excitement generated.

Past History: MM was acquired in 2007 from Trafford Coal.
MM had 2 mines, Mt Mulligan & King Cole mine.

Mt Mulligan was shut down in 1957 due to commissioning of a hydro power plant. This mine also had a major explosion in 1921 either due to coal seam gas or coal dust.

Location: Is 100km west of Port of Cairns & about 50km from Dimbulah town. Has sealed road & an operating rail line.

Age of Coal: Permain period, hence called Permian Coal Measures (or CM in the boreholes).

Depth: 450 to 650m from the Plateau top.

Mining in Recent times: MM was operated in the 70's by CRA and in the 80s by International Mining Corporation.

They identified 6 seams out of which 3 were worked (CM1,2,3).

Two diamond drill holes, DDH1 & DDH2 were drilled.

DDH1: found 3.48m thk coal in 4 seams (avg thknss 0.86m)
DDH2: found 7.04m thk coal in 6 seams (avg thknss 1.17m)

Coal has high ash content (45%) which after treatment gives a washed coal yield of 99.7%, Ash: 5.3%, Density 1.6

DDH1 & DDH2 are 5km apart on the table top, which itself is 4 km wide.

From the 2 holes, the 5 seams extend for an area of 50 sqkm, 1.8m avg tknss & a density of 1.6 to give 144.3 million tons of Coal.

Extrapolation between these holes is assumed to give 507 million tons.

Using longwall mining method, with 1 or 2 longwalls they anticipate to produce 2-4 mT/yr.

First target is to define the resource. This will b done by drilling 10 holes, 300m deep at 1km spacing interval. This should give a more accurate idea about the coal thkness & a resource in Million tons close to 500 or thereabouts.

Cheers