LONDON (ShareCast) - ATH Resources lost almost half its value on Thursday after it said a big drop in coal prices had hit trading hard and it was in discussions with its banks. "International coal prices have fallen by some 21% since the beginning of the calendar year and by over 28% since the beginning of the group's financial year," it said. This meant some projects would have to be delayed. "The board continues to have discussions with its banking syndicate...in order to secure adequate facilities for the group," it said. Shares dropped 47% on the news.

It was also a bad day for Churchill Mining, which said the Supreme Court of Indonesia had rejected its appeal over the revocation of four mining licences. The company has also filed a claim at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes in Washington D.C. against the Republic of Indonesia. It claims direct breaches of Indonesia's investment laws and Indonesia's obligations under international investment treaties. Churchill's share price fell 10% following the announcement.

Continuing the run of bad news Mariana Resources fell 10% after it said its drilling programme had been interrupted by bad weather. The firm said it had completed a diamond drilling programme at its flagship Las Calandrias gold-silver project in Argentina but its Pichones target and Aguila project were hit by "access problems".

San Leon Energy also fell despite announcing that is had successfully expanded its existing Rawicz Concession in the Permian/SW Carboniferous Basin of Poland. The firm said the addition of the gas field was key to its strategy to focus on near-term production to generate cash flow while it continued to "understand the significant upside present in the deeper Carboniferous".

China-focused Fortune Oil was a rare riser amongst the resource stocks after it announced material progress relating to its Liulin Coal Bed Methane business. Total field production from the Fortune Liulin Gas horizontal wells now exceeded 14,000 cubic metres per day, it said. The most successful well to date was now producing over 7,000 cubic metres per day, a rate which exceeds all previous wells drilled by Fortune.

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