Heap leaching may lower Olympic Dam costs – BHP Billiton CEO
PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Diversified miner BHP Billiton CEO Andrew Mackenzie said on Thursday that the miner was investigating heap leaching opportunities at the Olympic Dam operation, in South Australia, as a gateway to expansion.
Speaking at the company’s annual general meeting, Mackenzie told shareholders that heap leaching was a lower cost way to extract metals from the underground ore.
“Based on know-how transferred from our copper assets in Chile, we will first increase the amount of ore hoisted and focus more on high-grade areas of the orebody. This will lift the productivity of the existing infrastructure and take it to its nameplate capacity.”
Mackenzie noted that if the heap leach pilot tests, which were currently under way, proved successfully, BHP would use the technology and would use phased expansions of the underground mine to further increase Olympic Dam’s output.
Earlier this year, Olympic Dam asset president Darryl Cuzzubbo said that any expansion of the Olympic Dam asset would be closely linked to efficiency, at is was often the operating cost of an expanded plant that drove the return on capital.
He noted, at the time, that the company had identified the top ten cost and value drivers at the Olympic Dam operation, and would look at cost cutting efficiencies before implementing an expansion plan.
BHP in 2012 shelved a $20-billion expansion plan at Olympic Dam, which would have seen the miner dig an openpit mine to quadruple output. At the time, the company said that it would investigate cheaper alternatives to expand the mine.
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