Shenhua Group, China's top coal producer, is in talks with Russian coal companies to explore and develop coal mines in Russia, company chairman Zhang Xiwu said Tuesday.
The comment by Zhang at the China-Russia Business Forum, in which he gave few further details, comes as China has sharply increased its appetite for foreign coal this year.
Zhang said in a speech at the forum that Siberia and the Far East region is a focus area for Shenhua to develop strategic cooperation.
Besides coal exploration and production, Shenhua is also seeking opportunities to invest in power plants and renewable energy in Russia, he added.
Russia and China hold the world's second and third largest coal reserves respectively, after the U.S.
China imported 7.1 million metric tons of coal from Russia in the first eight months of this year, a more than twenty-fold increase from the same period last year, according to data from China's General Administration of Customs.
On other overseas fronts, Shenhua paid A$299.9 million to the Australian government in November last year for a permit to explore the Watermark area in New South Wales, which has estimated reserves of 1 billion tons of thermal coal.
Shenhua is also active in South Sumatra, Indonesia, where it's in a project to produce up to 3 million tons of coal and build, by 2012, two 150-megawatt power generation units.
However, these are only small steps compared with domestic peer Yanzhou Coal Mining Co.'s (1171.HK) offer of than $3 billion to take over Australian coal miner Felix Resources Ltd. (FLX.AU).
The board secretary of Shenhua Group's listed arm China Shenhua Energy Co. (1088.HK), Huang Qing, said in June that the company's international strategy is very cautious due to limited experience in overseas business ventures.