Altona Energy Regulatory News (ANR)

Altona Energy Plc - Westfield Coal Report

PR Newswire

London, January 9

10 January 2018

Altona Energy Plc

(“Altona” or “the Company”)

Westfield Coal Report

The Board of Altona (AIM: ANR) is pleased to update shareholders with the following information regarding the recently commissioned coal study focused on its Westfield tenement (EL 5676):

A seam of between 3-6m thickness has been confirmed

Groundwater level only 10m above the seam in places

Seam has as little as 80m of coverage in places

Westfield is estimated to contain approximately 800m tonnes of coal in total (non-JORC compliant).

The report was conducted by Runge Pincock Minarco Global (“RPM”) who are a specialist professional mining consultant with previous history with the Arckaringa Exploration Licences. RPM was engaged by WSP Australia Pty Ltd (“WSP”), the Company’s mining consultant.

The study confirmed the existence of two coal seams in the tenement, the thicker of the two, the upper seam, being known as the Willoughby Seam. This seam is considered to be between 3-6m in depth and running northeast to southwest within the Westfield tenement. At its shallowest, it lies at a depth of approximately 80m (at the most southerly end currently explored) and increases in depth to 215m at the northern end, where the seam has been found to be at its thickest. The seam is believed to continue running southwest, beyond the edge of the tenement, but no exploration has been conducted in this area to date.

The coal is believed to be “less wet”, in that it doesn’t have significant groundwater issues, a key criteria for this report, and the Board is of the opinion, based on these findings, that it could be de-watered sufficiently to permit either open cut mining or ‘longwall’ mining (an underground method using a single horizontal shaft along the coal face). Previous reports on the Westfield tenement have focused on underground mining operations in the northeast quadrant where the coal was considered too deep for viable open cut mining; however, with the coal price currently around US$100 per tonne, the board believes an open cut mining operation may be viable for parts of the Willoughby seam in the southwest quadrant, should a suitable resource base be established.

The historical data for Westfield is fairly comprehensive in the northeast quadrant of the tenement, but little exploration has been done to date in the southwest area where the Company is now focused.

The groundwater level in the upper-most area of the southwest quadrant of Westfield, has been found to sit only 10m above the seam and the expectation, extrapolated from the modelling of the water table further southwest in the tenement, shows it has the potential to be deeper still, to the extent that, should the Willoughby seam persist at an 80m depth, it may sit above the water table in the most south westerly portion of the tenement.

The Board is encouraged by these findings and will meet with WSP in mid-January, in Adelaide, to determine the following:

Identify drilling targets by conducting either aerial gravity and/or magnetic, or terrestrial seismic surveys – which will accurately define the thickness of the Willoughby Seam and confirm the existence of viable coal in other areas of Westfield.

An appropriate mining method and to develop indicative capital and operational costs

Assess which technologies have the potential to be economically viable based on the results of the tests to date (i.e. the assumed depth of top of coal in the Willoughby Seam and the properties of the coal already tested, including that in other areas of Westfield)

The Company expects to issue a more detailed timetable in the coming weeks.

Nick Lyth, CEO of Altona, commented, “I am delighted that we have identified an area within our tenements that appears to contain significant quantities of coal at an 80m depth with manageable groundwater. Our next step is to develop a detailed exploration strategy to continue to prove up the resource and de-risk this exciting opportunity.

“This represents a major step forward for Altona in delivering value to its shareholders.”

This announcement contains inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of Regulation (EU) 596/2014.

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For further information, please visit www.altonaenergy.com or contact:

About Altona

Altona is listed on the London Stock Exchange’s AIM market. Its principal focus is on the evaluation and development of the Company’s flagship Arckaringa Project to exploit the significant coal resources contained in three exploration licences covering 2,500 sq. kms in the northern portion of the Permian Arckaringa Basin in South Australia. The Project is designed to produce either coal or syngas products for the Australian market and export from an historic resource exceeding 7.8 billion tonnes of coal (1.3 billion tonnes historic JORC (2004) compliant).