BHP warns of water scarcity amid population increases and rising demand for steel, energy

BHP says industry has a role to play in safeguarding global water supplies as population growth puts pressure on resources.

Shane Oldfield a pastoralist who has been cutting back his cattle due to the lack of rain in the area and has also battling with BHP over water from the Great Artesian Basin on his property Clayton Station.

BHP says rising populations and steel and energy demand could stretch the globe’s water resources, expanding on chief executive Andrew Mackenzie’s recent comment that water sustainability is one of the two top challenges facing humans, along with carbon emissions.

Speaking at the International Mining and Resources Conference in Melbourne today, BHP Olympic Dam mine president, Laura Tyler, said the mining industry had a role to play in safeguarding global water supplies.

“Rising populations and increased demand for steel and energy have the potential to stretch water resources,” Ms Tyler said.

The speech was briefly interrupted by a lone protester who got past the conference’s tight security to call for “land rights, not mining rights”.

BHP (BHP) has a target to reduce freshwater withdrawal by 15 per cent over the next five years.

She said BHP geoscientists were working with the Federal Government to recover water pressure across the Great Artesian Basin.

“The Great Artesian Basin is one of the largest underground reservoirs in the world, and it supplies water to Olympic Dam and the nearby townships of Roxby Downs and Andamooka,” Ms Tyler said.

“The extraction of water for industrial and agricultural use reduces the water pressure and causes lower environmental flows to artesian springs that arise from it. We’re capping, repairing and restoring uncontrolled bores in order to offset the impact on water pressures in the vicinity of these springs.”

At BHP’s London annual general meeting in London last month, Mr Mackenzie declared water sustainability and carbon emissions were “the biggest challenges humankind now faces”.