http://www.theaustralian.com.au/
BHP Billiton has outlined new plans to turn the Olympic Dam mine in South Australia into the world’s second-biggest copper mine and potentially the world’s biggest uranium mine, in a big-ticket expansion that could see extra production at the start of next decade.
The plans, which BHP hopes to start exploring in earnest this year, are a big pullback from a $US30 billion open pit expansion of the giant copper-uranium-gold deposit shelved in 2012.
But they are the strongest indication since then that BHP is still serious about a big expansion of the massive Olympic Dam deposit that has been talked about since BHP acquired the mine in its 2005 takeover of WMC Resources. If the expansion goes ahead, it represents an extra $US3bn ($3.5bn) of potential annual revenue for BHP at current copper prices.
In presentations to analysts and media in Sydney yesterday, BHP chief financial officer Peter Bevean revealed the mining giant was targeting an underground mine expansion that would start producing in 2021-22 and ramp up to copper production of more than 450,000 tonnes a year by 2024.
This is more than double the 184,000 tonnes of copper Olympic Dam produced in 2013-14, but is well down on the 750,000 tonnes a year previously flagged under boomtime plans for the world’s biggest open-pit mine.
“If we can make it work, it should be very compelling — this is still a large project,” said Mr ¬Bevean, who until recently was BHP’s copper chief.
Despite flagging the expanded Olympic Dam would be in the world’s least-expensive quartile of copper mines, Mr Bevean noted it would still need to compete for funding approval with BHP’s other growth projects.
“We’re going to need everybody to come to the party on this one; we can do so much, but if we’re going to get this project up, we’re really going to need the support of the broader community, the support of the government and so on,” he said.
“It’s not a slam dunk.”
The expansion would be good news for South Australia, which did not hide its disappointment when the shelving of the previous expansion scotched the struggling state’s hopes of a resultant economic surge.
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