Prairies coal concession in Poland confirmed by court

Lublin Coal Project is a large-scale premium coal project in the Lublin Coal Basin in southeast Poland. It has an estimated JORC coal resource of 722 million t. Testing of the coal has indicated the presence of semi-soft coking coal.

A court in Warsaw has affirmed Prairie Mining’s exclusive right to take the K-6-7 mining concession – part Prairie’s Lublin Coal Project – through to mining production, rejecting rival claims over the concession from Lubelski Wegiel Bogdanka.

“We are pleased that the administrative court has rejected Bogdanka’s administrative complaints,” said Prairie’s Ben Stoikovich. “This court ruling confirms, beyond doubt, Prairie’s exclusive right to progress towards a mining concession over the strategically important, world class coal deposit.”

Bogdanka already mines adjacent to the disputed concession and had applied to Poland’s Ministry of Environment to extend its operations into K-6-7. In a statement, its outgoing CEO, Zbigniew Stopa, said the company was disappointed with the ruling and promised to continue to its legal challenge.

On 24 March Bogdanka announced that Stopa had been dismissed from his position on the company’s management board, along with several others, effective from 31 March. At the time of writing, it was unclear how this would impact future legal action by the company relating to the K-6-7 concession.

Responding to Stopa’s threat of continuing legal action, Prairie noted that “Bogdanka’s claims have been consistently and vigorously rejected by the Polish government” and that any further action would “merely be ill-conceived.”

The Lublin Coal Project is a large-scale premium coal project in the Lublin Coal Basin in southeast Poland. It has an estimated JORC coal resource of 722 million t. Testing of the coal has indicated the presence of semi-soft coking coal.

“Prairie is proud to be operating in Poland, which is an excellent jurisdiction for coal mining investment,” concluded Stoikovich. “I am excited by the opportunity to develop a genuinely world-class, lowest-cost hard coal mine that will provide security of supply to Europe for decades to come. We are creating new jobs and investing heavily in our development program and as a result enjoy strong support for our project from local communities and regional authorities.”

Source: World coal