SinoCoking Coal and Coke Chemical Industries, Inc. announced it has signed an exclusive agreement with both the Institute of Process Engineering of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the North China Institute of Science and Technology to refine and implement a technology that will be used, beginning next month, to convert the 21 million tons of coal at four SinoCoking underground mines into syngas, a clean burning fuel. The first phase of the project, which will cost approximately $18 million and be funded primarily from SinoCoking's cash reserves, is expected to be completed in February 2015 and yield a combined syngas output of 60,000 cubic meters per hour. This output will produce incremental gross profit in 2015 of from $30 to $45 million.

Subsequent phases of the project, expected to be completed by the end of 2016, will cost about $280 million and will be funded primarily from bank loans and company-issued debt. At completion, the project is expected to have an output capacity, subject to market demand, of 880,000 cubic meters of syngas per hour.