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State-owned coal miner PT Tambang Batubara Bukit Asam said on Thursday that it had offered to sell 500 million tons of coal over a 30-year period to South Africa’s Sasol, and would form a consortium with other domestic miners to meet Sasol’s demand for 2 billion tons over the next three decades.

Sasol, the world’s largest producer of synthetic fuel, is in talks with Bukit Asam and state-owned oil and gas firm PT Pertamina about developing a $10 billion coal-liquefaction plant in Indonesia. The project would require an estimated 2 billion tons of coal over 30 years.

“It depends on them now,” Bukit Asam president director Sukrisno said, declining to disclose the price of the coal offered.

Coal liquefaction is a process that turns coal into a liquid fuel that can be substituted for gasoline. Sasol has said it could produce as much as 80,000 barrels a day of clean-burning, high-quality fuel once the liquefaction plant is completed.

The government has identified four potential sites for the plant, which is expected to be built by the end of 2014. These include Musi Banyuasi in South Sumatra, which has estimated coal reserves of 2.9 billion tons, and Berau, East Kalimantan, which has estimated reserves of 3 billion tons.

Sukrisno said Bukit Asam, which has estimated coal reserves of about 1.8 billion tons, had already allocated much its reserves to Chinese buyers and domestic power plants.