China Power International Development Ltd. (CPI), a unit of major power producer China Power Investment Corp., has denied weekend media reports that it has signed a 60-billion US dollar coal-supply deal with Australia's mining firm Resourcehouse.
The company is claiming that the two companies have actually signed a letter of intent and that price negotiations have yet to begin, an official from China Power International Development told the Chinese news agency, Xinhua.
Resourcehouse claimed on Saturday that the two companies had signed a deal for it to supply CPI with 30 million tonnes of coal a year for 20 years from 2014. Coal for the deal would come from a mine project in Queensland which was to be built by Metallurgical Corporation of China Limited, one of the world's biggest engineering contractors. The mine – named China First – would cost $7 billion and would be operational by 2013 with the CPI agreement kicking in the following year.
The un-named CPI official alleged that the sum of $60 billion was an estimate by Resourcehouse and that the figure which was revealed by the Australian company was probably for its own benefit.
Australia is the biggest exporter of coal to China exporting 43.9 million tonnes in 2009.
No comments:
Post a Comment