XINAO Group Co, China's leading privately-owned piped-gas distributor, plans to have half of its revenue and profit coming from the coal-to-chemical business and will later list such assets in Western stock markets.
"We are considering listing the coal-to-chemical business, probably in New York, or London, and the coal mining sector in Toronto," Zou Benzhen, assistant to the chairman, said in an interview yesterday.
He didn't indicate any timeframe for the listing or say how much funds it targets to raise from the listing.
Xinao Group is the parent of Hong Kong-listed Xinao Gas Holdings Ltd. It has listed a bio-chemical arm in Shanghai and an energy equipment unit in Hong Kong.
"We want to tap more into the upstream sector to capture the huge market," Zou said. "Coal conversion could also produce some gas, which can be used to feed our gas projects."
The firm has started building a 2.4-billion yuan (US$314 million) coal conversion project in Inner Mongolia, which is set to start producing dimethyl ether, a clean-burning alternative fuel, by the end of 2008.
Zou said Xinao is looking for coal mines in Russia, Mongolia and even the United States after acquiring some mining operations domestically.
Starting as a city gas distributor, Xinao is among a very few private companies in China with an import license for liquefied natural gas, the others being the three state-owned energy giants, PetroChina, Sinopec and CNOOC.
It has been in talks with companies like Total of France and Spain's Natural Gas on LNG supplies although so far it hasn't secured any imports and relied on state firms for LNG to feed its gas projects.
"Talks are going smoothly with these foreign suppliers," Zou said, declining to say when a first deal could be secured.