APF.L Regulatory News (APF)

11 Jan 2006 16:30

Anglo Pacific Group PLC11 January 2006 January 11, 2006 Anglo Pacific Group PLC Anglo Pacific Announces Proposed Joint Venture Anglo Pacific Group ("Anglo Pacific") is pleased to announce that it has enteredinto a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with West Hawk Development Corp. ("WestHawk"), (WHD-TSX.V) The intent of the MOU is to form a working relationship between the twocompanies focusing on the joint exploration and development of Anglo Pacific'sand West Hawk's Upper and Lower Discovery coal seams located at the Groundhogcoal field in British Columbia, Canada. The two properties are contiguous and are underlain by dominantly shale andsandstone beds of the Upper Jurassic Currier Formation which contain the Upperand Lower Discovery coal seams. The coal seams outcrop on both properties andare believed to be stratigraphically and structurally related according to theresults of previous drilling. In total, twenty five individual seams have beendocumented in the area grading from anthracite to meta-anthracite in quality. The seams on West Hawk's Lower Discovery and Evans Creek properties alonecomprise an inferred resource of 48,000,000 tonnes, having been outlined in arecently completed National Instrument 43-101 report produced by Don WedmanP.Eng.. Additional resources are expected to be outlined by exploration work onboth Anglo Pacific's Upper Discovery and West Hawk's Lower Discovery Creekproperties. Dr. Mark Hart the COO of West Hawk explained "the concept of the joint ventureplan is to gain economies of scale by increasing the size of the project andtherefore reducing exploration, development and mining costs". Dr. Hart hasjust recently joined West Hawk and is considered an expert in Coal Mining havinggraduated with a PhD from the Colorado School of Mines and worked as a seniorexecutive for several senior mining and energy companies. It is proposed that both Anglo Pacific and West Hawk will each be initiallycontributing C$600,000 to the joint operating company and implementing aC$1,200,000 exploration program to begin this spring designed to advance thecurrent inferred resources at the Upper and Lower Discovery properties to themeasured and indicated category. As part of the working relationship Anglo Pacific has agreed to subscribeC$600,000 to a private placement in West Hawk consisting of 1.5 million unitsat a price of C$0.40 per unit. Each unit will consist of 1 common share and onehalf of one share purchase warrant. Each whole warrant will entitle the holderto purchase one share of West Hawk at a price of C$0.60 for a period of 2 years.Once the financing is completed Anglo Pacific will be the beneficial owner of3.9 million common shares of West Hawk equivalent to approximately 13.% of theissued and outstanding share capital. West Hawk is a mineral exploration and development company committed to buildingshareholder value through the development of its four coal properties inNorthern British Columbia including plans to build an Integrated GasificationCombined Cycle (IGCC) electrical power plant and a coal-to-liquids plant (diesel& naphtha) at the company's Australian Creek project 28 km South of Quesnel B.C. This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange