With this approval, the company plans to outline final development and investment program during the three-year period before the production begins in 2016.
The company claims that the project has large-scale deposits of high-quality coking coal to permit open-cut mining. It aims to produce 5 million tons of coking coal a year from the mine.
Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal along with its subsidiary Nippon Steel Trading owns 33% stake in the project.
The remaining ownership is held with Talbot Group and POSCO with 58.9% and 7.8% stake in the project, respectively.
