In what has been called a punchy speech by a Fairfax correspondent, Coleman ridiculed the “clean coal” term and spruiked gas as a part of the club of climate-friendly energy sources.

He also pointed out that gas-fired power could help overcome the smog challenges faced by China and India – which happen to be leading coal consumers.

While there has been a spree of coal bashing by oil company chiefs at this conference, the severe downturn in coal prices is making this fuel more competitive against LNG.

The key LNG importer of Kogas is already planning to commission a 1 gigawatt capacity new coal-fired plant this year along with plans to bring in a combined 2.4Gw from two nuclear plants.

Kogas commercial manager for LNG procurement and trading Kunho Lee told Bloomberg at the conference that the company was trying to contemplate ways of reducing prices in long term LNG supply contracts.

He said talks with counterparties were at preliminary stages and declined to say which companies Kogas was talking to.