News

November 23, 2009

Little Altona Energy Now Has A JV With China’s 3rd Biggest Oil Company On A Huge Coal Resource In South Australia

By Charles Wyatt

A jump of 30 per cent in the share price greeted the news that AIM listed Altona Energy has at last signed up to a joint venture with CNOOC New Energy Investment on its Arckaringa coal project in South Australia. The reaction in the shares is not surprising as Arckaringa is a huge coal project in South Australia with a resource estimincluding gas and synthetic fuelsated at around 7.8 million tonnes yet Altona is still capitalised at less than £ 20 million. It therefore needed a big partner with the reputation, expertise and funding to get some real impetus behind what chairman Chris Lambert believes is one of the world’s biggest undeveloped energy banks. It has certainly found just such a partner in CNOOC as it is one of the three largest state owned oil companies in the Peoples Republic of China. More than that, it has proven expertise in Coal- to- Liquid technology which converts coal into more environmentally clean and manageable energy sources .

The process involves two major stages, gasification to produce synthetic gas rich in hydrogen and carbon, and a liquefication stage where the synthetic gas is reacted over a catalyst to produce high quality, ultraclean synthetic fuels and chemical feedstocks. CNOOC-NEI already has plenty of experience in synthetic gas so there is no great learning curve to climb. In fact C-to-L is a prime example of clean coal technology - the associated combined cycle units produce negligible sulphur oxides,...