News

February 02, 2010

Altona Energy Moves To The Bankable Feasibility Stage On Its Huge Coal-To-Liquids Project In Australia

By Stewart Dalby

“We no longer have a putative project, we have a business.” So says Chris Lambert, chairman of Altona Energy, the London Aim-traded, Australia-based company with plans to develop a massive coal-to-liquids scheme in South Australia.

Five years ago Altona just had a dream, and a seemingly impossible dream at that. The company had secured what it said was one of the world’s largest untapped energy sources. It had, at modest entry price, bought 100 per cent of three exploration licences at the Arckaringa Basin in South Australia, EL3360, EL3361, and EL3362. The licences contained huge coal deposits containing an estimated at 7.8 billion tonnes of coal. This really is huge, although at that stage it hadn’t been proved up to...