An 89.2 billion tonne worth coal reserve has been discovered at Sha'er Lake at China's northwest Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. Experts said the coal reserve is Asia's largest.

"We have submitted an exploitation plan for the super-large coal field to the central authorities. Once approved, the exploitation will officially begin," Xinhua News quoted Wei Cheng, deputy director of the Sha'er coal field excavation headquarters, as saying.

"The coal's quality is fine, with low sulphur, low phosphorus, low ash, high caloricity and relatively fewer harmful elements," he said.

In Xinjiang province alone, there are already some coal reserves of over 2 trillion tonnes, accounting for about 40 percent of China's total coal reserves, Xinhua News reported.

Earlier, China reported that Inner Mongolia, its largest coal producing region, came up with 908 million tonnes of coal from January to November this year, up 26.6 per cent from a year ago.