Liberty Project: Galilee Basin

The Galilee Basin is the last remaining major coal province yet to be developed in Queensland and holds significant reserves of coal potentially suitable for UCG. Liberty reported an inferred resource for the Rodney Creek project of 3.3 Billion tonnes (Mt) of thermal coal (refer to ASX announcement dated 15 December 2008).

Liberty entered a Heads of Agreement (HoA) with Carbon Energy Limited in July 2009 over the Rodney Creek project. The agreement is to develop and construct multiple UCG projects in the Galilee Basin through Joint Venture (JV). Work is expected to commence in the Galilee Basin in the near future, pending finalisation of the Joint Venture agreement.

Geology

The Galilee Basin is connected to the Bowen Basin by the Springsure Shelf. It is a major sedimentary basin in turn overlain by the Eromanga Basin, and in places Tertiary basalts.

Within the basin coal is known to exist in the Permian aged Bandana Formation and its correlatives, including the Betts Creek Beds. Seams can reach up to 10 metres thickness with coal quality as moderate ash low sulphur, low moisture sub bituminous to bituminous rank, thermal coal.

Lower Permian coal may also exist in the Reid’s Dome beds (or equivalents), the same formations seen to host the thick economic seams of the Bowen Basin to the east.

Opportunities also exist for more recent coal within the Moolayember (Triassic age) Formation, the upper Jurassic Westborne and Birkhead Formations as well as Cretaceous age coal of the Eromanga Basin in the Wallumbilla and Winton Formations.