BHP Billiton to spend $900m on copper and oil exploration
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.”
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