The Isaac River Project resource is located in the northern part of the Permo-Triassic Bowen Basin containing principally fluvial and some marine sediments. The Bowen Basin is part of a connected group of Permo-Triassic basins in eastern Australia which includes the Sydney and Gunnedah Basins. The economic coal seams are contained in the Late Permian Rangal Coal Measures which are approximately 100m thick. The Rangal Coal Measures are underlain by the Fort Cooper Coal Measures and overlain by the Late Permian to Early Triassic Rewan Group.

The Isaac River project area lies within the Permo-Triassic Bowen Basin. The Bowen Basin consists of 10 kilometre (km) thick sequences of volcanic, shallow marine and terrestrial sediments and is categorised back-arc to foreland basin.

The general stratigraphy of the project area includes (oldest to youngest):
-Coal seams occur within the Rangal Coal Measures and underlying Fort Cooper Coal Measures which are Late Permian in age. These seams dip to the east at approximately 7 - 25 degrees;
-The coal seams of interest found within the Project area are as follows – Leichhardt and Vermont Upper;
-Additional seams were intersected and in part analysed these were plies of the Vermont Lower and Girrah Seams.

The target seams have a cumulative thickness ofapproximately 7 m across the deposit. The underlying additional Vermont plies and Girrah seams have and additional 12m cumulative thickness.
< ........

Due to the sub-cropping seams in the project area, a margin ranking process based on a combination of contractor truck-excavator open cut mining and auger mining methods. The study is at concept level and therefore within a +/-30% accuracy level.

The open-cut pit shell has been constrained by the LHD seam crop line on the southern and eastern side of the deposit. On the west side, the pit shell is constrained through the allowance of a 50m clearance at ground level between the mining crest and the Daunia mining lease boundary for roads/drainage and bundwalls. The northern pit shell limit was generally constrained by the 100m depth of cover to the LHD seam. This 100m depth constraint was relaxed for a small portion in the central part of the northern limit in order to capture as much of the low strip ratio coal on the east side while maintaining an operationally practical shell.

Mine planning was conducted on a maximum 100m depth of cover for the opencut pit shell, which identified approximately a four to five year opencut LOM at an average ROM strip ratio of 10.6:1 BCM/ROMt. A contractor high wall mining operation with 300m plunges, following completion of the opencut operation was modelled resulting in an overall average ROM strip ratio of 8.6:1 BCM/ROMt for the base case. A contractor owned and operated highwall miner is scheduled for operation at the end of the mine.

- subscription is required.