Premier Peter Malinauskas tours BHP’s Oak Dam and Olympic Dam

As he tours the state’s far north, premier Peter Malinauskas has touted thousands of new jobs as part of a $5bn state-owned pipeline and desalination plant.

Thousands upon thousands of new jobs are being touted by Premier Peter Malinauskas from a multibillion-dollar BHP expansion being kickstarted by a more than $5bn state-owned pipeline and desalination plant.

Visiting the highly prospective Oak Dam copper deposit in the state’s far north on Monday morning, Mr Malinauskas said the desal plant could start supplying water by 2028 to drive a potential tripling of BHP’s copper smelter.

“What the world looks like if we achieve all those things is thousands upon thousands of more jobs,” he said on Monday.

“What we see is royalties, the revenue coming into the state government,” he said.

“But also, more importantly, a lift in the prosperity of our state more broadly, which is good for families.”

Mr Malinauskas is midway through a three-day major economic summit focused on the Upper Spencer Gulf, billed as a State Prosperity Project and positioned as showing South Australians that multiple projects are combining to boost the state’s wealth.

The Oak Dam deposit is being touted as a game-changer in BHP’s multi-billion dollar plans to create a world-leading copper province to supply surging demand for the non-ferrous metal, a highly efficient conduit for electricity generation, transmission and storage.

BHP wants the huge amounts of water to enable a copper smelter upgrade, potentially tripling the current capacity from 0.5 megatonnes to 1.7 megatonnes.

Premier Peter Malinauskas speaking to media in the state’s far north. Picture: Ben Clark

This could be supplied by the Northern Water project, a 600km pipeline from a 260 megalitre per day desalination plant on Eyre Peninsula, near Tumby Bay, for which BHP and the state government are co-funding feasibility studies.

Asked if BHP’s expansion plans could continue without Northern Water, BHP Copper South Australia asset president Anna Wiley said the project had been split into two phases to dramatically reduce reliance on taking water from the Great Artesian Basin.

“But it is incredibly important that we deliver both stage one – to support our existing operations – and stage two, to support our growth activities,” she said.

BHP wants to create a “copper province” by integrating and expanding four mines in relative proximity, about 560km northwest of Adelaide: Olympic Dam, Carrapateena, Prominent Hill and the Oak Dam prospect.

Expanding the smelter and refining facilities at Olympic Dam is the key to unlocking this copper province, BHP says.

Exploration at Oak Dam, 65km southeast of Olympic Dam, has found extremely high grade copper – up to two per cent of the extracted ore – compared to a standard 0.5 per cent.

After visiting Oak Dam on Tuesday morning, Mr Malinauskas then toured BHP’s vast Olympic Dam smelter complex, where copper concentrate is refined into copper cathode blocks by going through a flash furnace and an anode furnace.

BHP wants to use the Northern Water pipeline to produce more copper concentrate, created at each mine by using water to separate the ore.

This would produce more copper concentrate to feed the upgraded smelter at Olympic Dam, thus increasing production.

Ms Wiley said the SA operations were performing well and BHP had experienced further exploration success.

“BHP has created an integrated copper province that we hope will bring the scale required to economically and sustainably produce and process more copper here in SA and deliver it to global customers,” she said.

“The Oak Dam exploration project is progressing with 12 rigs currently on site, 150km of drilling completed, a core processing facility on site and a 150-person accommodation camp nearly complete.”

Another area below the Olympic Dam deposit is also being explored in a project called Olympic Dam Deeps.

Originally published as Premier Peter Malinauskas tours BHP’s Oak Dam and Olympic Dam