BHP’s Oak Dam project in South Australia has thrown up another good set of numbers, although the company stresses it’s early stages
BHP’s Oak Dam copper discovery is a long way from an investment decision, but the latest exploration results are encouraging.
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More than 12km of drilling at BHP’s Oak Dam copper discovery in South Australia’s Far North has delivered further stellar results.
Late last year the company stunned the mining world with copper drilling results described at the time as “pretty amazing’’, including a strike of 6 per cent copper over a length of 180m.
In its quarterly operational review released today, BHP said follow-up drilling at the prospect 65km southeast of the Olympic Dam copper, gold and uranium mine had returned results including 5.77 per cent copper over 44m and 2 per cent copper over 205m, with both results from a depth of more than 1km.
BHP will be conducting more drilling next month and said “The exploration project remains at an early stage with large parts of the target still to be drill tested’’.
At Olympic Dam the annual guidance remained unchanged at 180-205,000 tonnes of copper.
“Olympic Dam copper production increased by 5 per cent to 35kt as a result of the prior period acid plant outage, partially offset by the impact of planned preparatory work undertaken in the September 2019 quarter related to the replacement of the refinery crane,’’ the company said.
“The preparatory work is the most significant part of the project, with the physical replacement and commissioning of the refinery crane scheduled for the March 2020 quarter.
“Underground operations, the mill and the smelter performed to plan, enabling the build of anode stocks for processing through the refinery in the subsequent three quarters.’’
Internationally BHP said it would make a final investment decision on its long-delayed $US17 billion ($A25 billion) Jansen potash project in Canada by around February 2021.
Investors have been awaiting a decision from BHP on whether it would go ahead with the project, which would be its most significant investment in years, and which it hopes will provide another pillar of long-term growth.
BHP said project planning and work to finalise a port solution was continuing and the $US5 billion-plus Stage 1 would be presented to the board for an investment decision by February 2021.
Elsewhere, BHP posted a slight dip in its September quarter iron ore production due to planned maintenance at a key port, but maintained its FY20 iron ore production forecast. Output for the quarter was 69 million tonnes, down 1 per cent on a year ago and 3 per cent on the June quarter.
BHP shares closed 3.3 per cent lower at $34.86.