<p>Cleveland-Cliffs is to invest $140m in a 45% stake in the Sonoma coal project in Queensland’s Bowen Basin coalfields.</p> <p>The company said yesterday (Tuesday, January 9) that it had signed a non-binding term sheet with privately owned Australian coal company QCoal to take the stake in Sonoma, which is at the northern limit of the Bowen Basin coalfields. </p> <p>When completed, the Sonoma project is expected initially to produce 2m tonnes of marketable coal annually, beginning in late 2007. </p> <p>Plans call for annual production of marketable coal to increase to between 3m and 4m tonnes from 2008. </p> <p>The Sonoma project has a current JORC Resource estimate of 97m tonnes. </p> <br />



