BHP’s Olympic Dam copper mine out of action after storm hits
Wild electrical storms have put BHP’s Olympic Dam copper mine out of action with the company scrambling to assess the damage and how long it will take to restart operations.
Wild electrical storms have put BHP’s Olympic Dam copper mine out of action with the company facing a prolonged outage.
The South Australian government suggested it could be at least a week before Olympic Dam was back up and running in a major blow to BHP’s copper production forecasts.
The storms, which lashed northern South Australia with high winds and thousands of lightning strikes, damaged transmission towers carrying power to Olympic Dam and the rest of the region.
BHP said two transmission lines supplying Olympic Dam and the town of Roxby Downs, where most of its workforce is based, had suffered structural damage.
It remains unclear how long it will take to resume work at Olympic Dam, which has operated relatively trouble-free since storms in 2016 that caused a 15-day shutdown. The 2016 outage cost BHP about $137m and led to a debate about the state’s reliance on renewable energy.
BHP said it was working with South Australian poles-and-wires company ElectraNet to gauge the extent of the damage and the timeline for restoring power.
South Australian Mines and Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis speculated that it would be at least seven days before power was restored.
BHP is using back-up generators to avoid a complete shutdown of the smelter and refinery at Olympic Dam, but it has halted any processing. A complete shutdown would complicate any restart.
“Electrical storms in South Australia’s north last night caused structural damage to two transmission lines that supply Olympic Dam and Roxby Downs,” a BHP spokeswoman said.
“We have paused the majority of our underground mining and surface processing operations. Back-up generation is providing power to Roxby Downs township, along with critical on-site infrastructure. Business continuity plans are in place.
“We are working closely with ElectraNet and Enerven to understand the scale of impact and the timeline for power to be restored.”
ElectraNet described the storms as a “significant weather event” that had damaged the high-voltage network.
“ElectraNet crews are working to restore power as soon as possible. Further updates will be provided as investigations continue,” it said.
BHP is in the process of integrating the Carrapateena and Prominent Hill mines it acquired in last year’s $9.6bn takeover of OZ Minerals, with plans to increase copper production by 50 per cent to more than 500,000 tonnes a year and then to 650,000 tonnes a year by the mid-2030s.
Those plans involve upgrades of the power network.
BHP said there had been no disruption at the Carrapateena, Prominent Hill and Oak Dam operations in the wake of Thursday night’s storms.
