One of BHP’s pillars of the future has crumbled

BHP’s ‘future-facing’ ambitions have now been shredded, and dumped into the dustbin of history, thanks to brutal contemporary reality.

BHP CEO Mike Henry.

It is not only BHP’s ‘future-facing’ ambitions that have now been shredded. That have been dumped into the dustbin of history, thanks to brutal contemporary reality.

It is also the anti-fossil fuel fantasies of the Albanese-Bowen government.

Did anyone, least of all the said minister for destroying our energy system, notice the exquisite, the indeed grotesque, irony of BHP all-but abandoning nickel, and specifically nickel in Australia, just two days after the wind blowing too strongly sent 500,000 Victorian homes dark?

The old, post-steel BHP had been built on four ‘pillars’ – iron ore, copper, oil and gas, and coal, both power-station and blast furnace varieties.

The new BHP of chairman Ken MacKenzie and CEO Mike Henry was also to be built on four, or five, pillars, depending how they saw BHP’s future in coking coal.

These, though, were to be ‘future-facing’ pillars – ‘facing’ our, Australia’s and the world’s (excluding China and India), supposed exit from fossil fuels, into an all-renewable, energy future.

Aimed at that switch, BHP exited - what was to its collective corporate mind - ‘yesterday’ oil and gas.

That said, from a narrow ‘normal’ corporate perspective, it sensibly sold to Woodside.

It really had to get bigger, much bigger, in oil and gas – like buying Woodside – or get out. And it had really made the decision to ‘get out’, years ago when it, again sensibly, had quit US shale.

So, the future BHP’s spanking-new, 21st century, four pillars were going to be, cough-cough, Augustinian iron ore, copper, potash, and one of the two minerals critical to a battery-focused future: nickel.

BHP, also, specifically opted out of the race for the other one – lithium.

Or, again, five pillars - depending what it did with its Queensland coking coal, quite the best in the world at making the finest steel and the purest CO2.

I say ‘Augustinian’ iron ore, because it’s BHP’s ‘Lord make me CO2-emitting pure, but not just yet’, for so long as you put iron ore and coal together to make steel and CO2.

Iron ore is also BHP’s TINA: There Is No Alternative to it, if BHP wants to continue to make a profit; as we shall see again in BHP’s interim results next week, when iron ore will make by far the biggest contribution.

Yes, the potash pillar does indeed face the future; the world starves without it. But it’s also as 20th century as iron ore and coal. As also is – past and future pillar - copper, core to life in the 21st century. But also, in the 20th and every other century.

BHP has now bulldozed its nickel ‘future-facing’ pillar, writing those assets down to zero, zip, nada, and all-but announcing it won’t be building – or looking for – any new mines in Australia.

We’ll be getting all our nickel for all those future batteries, scattered with wind turbines and solar panels around the countryside, from Indonesia. An Indonesia that is building coal-fired power stations by the dozens.

While getting all those turbines and panels from China.

Facing the future? More like facing the past, an 18th century past.

Originally published as One of BHP’s pillars of the future has crumbled