1.2.2.1 Coal

There are no current coal mining activities occurring in the Cooper subregion. There is one Exploration Permit for Coal (EPC) within the subregion, EPC 2907 (Figure 7). Activity on this tenement is focused on defining an in situ deep coal exploration target of 600 to 1020 million tonnes of coal for underground coal gasification (Syngas Power Pty Ltd, 2015). It is unclear which coal-bearing units are being targeted, although coals have been reported in petroleum wells sited within the EPC, from the Winton and Birkhead formations, for example, in Cook-1 (Delhi Petroleum Limited, 1986), and the Toolachee Formation, for example, in Windula-1 (Santos Limited, 2006). Underground coal gasification is out of scope for consideration in the Bioregional Assessment Programme, and as such, EPC 2907 is not further considered.