The Shenzi development in the Gulf of Mexico, which BHP Billiton discovered in the 2000s. The company continues to build its acreage position in the area.
JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Diversified mining major BHP Billiton would spend about $900-million on exploration in the next financial year, focusing on opportunities in copper and oil.
The exploration budget represented about 18% of BHP Billiton’s overall capital budget of $5-billion for the 2017 financial year, head of geoscience Laura Tyler said on Monday.
“We are investing at a time when most in our sector continue to reduce discretionary spend,” she said.
The 2017 forecast compared with the $700-million that BHP Billiton previously said its 2016 financial year's exploration expenditure would be.
BHP Billiton’s petroleum exploration programme was focused on three conventional deep-water basins in the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean and the Northern Beagle sub-basin off the coast of Western Australia.
The copper exploration programme was targeting tier-one greenfield mineral deposits, with a particular focus on copper porphyry and skarn deposits in Chile, Peru and the US; sedimentary hosted copper deposits in the north of Canada and iron-oxide/copper/gold deposits in South Australia’s Stuart Shelf, adjacent to Olympic Dam.
Tyler reported that BHP Billiton, which viewed exploration as a key source of value creation, had reduced its exploration operating costs by 70% since 2013 and that it had increased the targets tested by 44%.
“We are challenging existing paradigms with a scientific-based and disciplined approach to exploration.”