New | China's Sino Oil and Gas expects to get Beijing's approval for coal-bed methane mass production soon

Sino Oil and Gas Holdings, a Shanxi province developer of projects to extract natural gas trapped within coal seams, may obtain final approval from Beijing to mass produce the cleaner-burning fuel in the third quarter, says its chairman.

If realised, this could make it China's second Sino-foreign joint venture to get approval to enter into commercial production of so-called coal-bed methane, after management's previous expectations were dashed due to longer than expected approval procedures.

"There is no real outstanding barrier to the approval, we have submitted all the documents required by the relevant authorities," Sino Oil chairman Dai Xiaobing said. "I personally believe it will come in the third quarter."

Previously, Dai had said he expected the final approval to be obtained by the end of 2013, which was then pushed back to the third quarter of last year.

He said the delays were partly because the number of documents and approvals required from various government departments had risen to 11 from seven since it began the approval process, and partly due to longer than expected approvals by various levels of governments.

China is estimated to have the world's third-largest coal-bed methane reserve, which is largely untapped due to technical challenges and insufficient spending on drilling and infrastructure.