Australian coal producer Xstrata has announced that it will acquire the Sukunka hard coking coal deposit (Sukunka) from Canada's Talisman Energy Inc. for US$500 million in cash, subject to customary conditions.
Sukunka is located in the Peace River Coalfield of northern British Columbia, next to the First Coal Corporation and Lossan tenements acquired by Xstrata Coal in August and October 2011 respectively.
Xstrata stated that, based on technical analysis, Sukunka "has the potential to be a high quality metallurgical coal mine". The deposit has an NI 43-101 compliant coal resource of 236 million mt. The consultancy firm Norwest Corporation has completed a pre-feasibility study for a longwall mine producing hard coking coal.