Southwestern China's Guizhou province has proposed a 5 million tonnes-per-year coal-to-oil project after China's home-grown indirect coal liquefication technology was endorsed by the National Energy Administration .

Officials with the administration agreed to include the project in China's energy development plan for the five years ending 2015, the Guizhou Development and Reform Commission said in a report on its website .

The domestic indirect coal-to-oil technology, hatched by the Institute of Coal Chemistry under Chinese Academy of Sciences, has been applied in three pilot projects and one of them, a 160,000 tonnes-per-year plant Yitai in Inner Mongolia, passed NEA's examination in July, the report said.

The 75 billion yuan project proposed by Guizhou will adopt the technology.

State-owned Shenhua Group Corp, China's largest coal miner and parent of China Shenhua Energy Co Ltd , has started trial operation of a 1.08 million tpy coal-to-oil plant which is based on a direct coal-to-liquids technology.

Shenhua's proposed joint venture with South Africa's Sasol in Ningxia region, which would adopt the latter's indirect coal-to-liquids technology, has yet to be approved by Chinese government.