The Australian company Riversdale Mining plans to open its first coal mine in the western Mozambican province of Tete by the end of 2010, AIM reported on Tuesday.

     Briefing Mozambican journalists on the company's operations on Tuesday, Riversdale's Country Manager for Mozambique Syd Parkhouse said that Riversdale has now obtained licences in Tete covering 290,080 hectares.

     At one of these tenements, at Benga, in the Moatize coal basin, there is an inferred reserve of 1.9 billion tons of coking coal. Benga only covers around 4,000 hectares. The rest of the area licensed to Riversdale is largely unexplored.

     The company has tenements on both banks of the Zambezi, and the area concerned extends to the south bank of Lake Cahora Bassa. With over 280,000 hectares still to explore, it is quite likely that there is more coal in the Riversdale tenements than in the better known area in Moatize licensed to the Brazilian Companhia Vale de Rio Doce (CVRD), said the report. The Brazilian concession contains an estimated 2.4 billion tons of coal.

     Riversdale describes Tete as "the next major coking coal basin. "

     While Riversdale's main interest is in coking coal, thermal coal would be a secondary product from Benga. Parkhouse said there are plans to involve a second Australian company, Elgas, in constructing a coal fired power station at Benga, with the initial capacity to generate 500 megawatts, but eventually producing 2,000 megawatts.