Royal Dutch Shell yesterday said it had decided to postpone a coal-to-liquids (CTL) joint project with Shenhua Group in the Ningxia Hui autonomous region.

"In a period of economic downturn, we have postponed the project due to a number of reasons," Lim Haw Kuang, executive chairman of Shell Companies in China, told China Daily yesterday, without elaborating.

But the company will keep playing an active role in China's coal gasification sector, he added.