Black River, White Energy sign joint venture agreement for African clean coal project

11 November 2008

Emerging markets investor Black River Asset Management has signed a joint venture agreement with clean coal company White Energy Company, investing $70m into the new company.

White Energy and Black River will establish a special purpose company to be held 51 per cent by White Energy and 49 per cent by Black River. The former has invested approximately $31m, while the latter has committed $70m.

Under the terms of the agreement, the companies will develop and commercialise White Energy’s coal upgrading technology throughout Africa, either on its own or in conjunction with other companies to construct and operate coal upgrading plants.

Black River’s senior portfolio manager Torben Thordsen said, ‘Black River has been a shareholder of White Energy for more than two years. Given our experience in Africa and our interaction to date with African coal and power companies, we believe that White Energy’s upgrading technology and its unique process could go a long way to improving energy output in Africa.’

Black River is an independently managed subsidiary of asset management company Cargill.

White Energy is in the process of constructing a one million tonne per annum plant in Indonesia in joint venture with PT Bayan Resources. The company also has a joint venture agreement with Indonesian coal company Adaro Group and Japanese trading house Itochu Corporation to build additional coal upgrading plants in Indonesia.

White Energy has also signed a heads of agreement with Datang International Power Generation Company in relation to the development of coal upgrading plants in China and has completed a feasibility study with Buckskin Mining Company and NRG Power Marketing in respect of a project to construct coal upgrading plants at the Buckskin mine in Campbell County, US.

Copyright © 2008 newnet

Tags: clean coal, private equity

This story was published on Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 at 6:09 pm and is filed under Africa, deals, energy efficiency. You can follow any responses to article entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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