INTERVIEW WITH MR. JOHN ATKINSON, MANAGING DIRECTOR OF WHITE ENERGY COMPANY LIMITED (WEC)

“Development of US Plant to Proceed”

http://www.brr.com.au/event/51743

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2008, 9:30 AM.

            BRR    Today on Boardroom Radio we welcome the Managing Director of White Energy Company, Mr. John Atkinson.

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                        Welcome to Boardroom Radio, John.

            WEC   Hi Terrence.  How are you doing?

            BRR    John, let’s firstly touch on the announcement out this week which is White

15                    Energy moving closer to the development of your first US Coal Upgrading Plant.

            WEC   Yes.  Well look, we’re delighted with the progress we’re making in the US.  If they follow us at White Energy, they’ll know that we appointed a very high calibre executive team in the US, as I say, a while ago now to follow up on

20                    the opportunities we had there and they’ve done a terrific job in building our company in that market.  The announcement today really just confirmed that the feasibility study we’ve been doing with two terrific groups in the US, one Buckskin Mining Company which is owned by the Kiewit Corporation, one of America’s large construction groups, and the second company, NRG, which

25                    is a very large energy utility company in the US.  We’ve signed the development agreement with them to conduct a feasibility study.  That feasibility was very thorough exercise and is complete.  We’re now going into the second phase of that development agreement which is essentially looking at the commercial aspects of us building a plant.  We’ve decided to move

30                    forward and build that plant and now we’re negotiating commercial terms with Buckskin in respect of the feeds, stock, toll, and the sizing the plant on their mine in the part of the basin.  On the other side of the transaction, we’re negotiating with NRG in relation to them acquiring the upgraded product from us.

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            BRR    John, certainly it will happen in North America.  That is looking at your Cessnock Plant, that’s up and running, how is this going at the moment?

            WEC   The Cessnock Plant is going very smoothly like anything you do, it’s not without hiccups but we’re delighted with how we’ve managed to process coal. 

40                    You might recall terms for that process is very simple, the mechanical process, but the manner with which Cessnock is operated has been terrific.  Interestingly, we’ve had to commission the coal, not with sub-bituminous product which is really the type of a high-moisture coal that the plant was designed for, but instead really because of the lack of availability of that

45                    product at the moment.  We’ve commissioned the plant with extremely high-moisture coal, a brown coal from the Latrobe Valley in Victoria.  That has not been ideal from one perspective because it’s meant that we’ve had to, if you like, tinker with elements of the plant in order to get it to run smoothly but interestingly that tinkering has been very worthwhile because we’ve processed this very high-moisture coal extremely well.  The reality is that it’s proved to us that our market opportunity is much greater than even we originally expected because we clearly can now turn brown coal, which is you know coal of around 65% moisture, into a high energy product and that just

5                      increases our market opportunity globally.

            BRR    And John, finally you are also building the plant in Indonesia, can you give us an update on what’s happening over there?

            WEC   In Indonesia, Terrence, as you know we’ve been building a plant.  That plant

10                    is now almost 65%, I believe, complete.  The construction process has gone very well, gone to plan, and we’re on track and we’re hoping that the construction process will be concluded by the end of this year and commissioning early next year as planned.

15        BRR    John, certainly a lot happening at White Energy and we do look forward to further updates as they come to hand.

            WEC   Good.  Terrence, I’ll look forward to providing them.

            BRR    John Atkinson, thanks for joining us today on Boardroom Radio.

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                        Now, if you have any questions about this broadcast or any others, please feel free to send me an email at brr@brr.com.au or via the Contact Us button on the homepage.  I’m Terrence Bell.  Thanks for listening to Boardroom Radio.

INTERVIEW CONCLUDED

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