Woke BHP’s $600m coal gift to Whitehaven Coal

Whitehaven Coal shares rallied more than 10 per cent after investors quickly realised that the miner had scored a coup courtesy of BHP’s woke board.

BHP wants to get out of fossil fuels.

Whitehaven – unapologetically – Coal has scored a $500m-$1bn coup, courtesy of a BHP board of directors determined on its bizarre journey into a fantasy future.

BHP wants to get out of fossil fuels. It sold its oil and gas assets to Woodside, and has now sold a big chunk of its coal operations to Whitehaven.

The rest, and especially, the really wicked – in the very woke eyes of a BHP board and senior management – energy coal are on the market, even if BHP might vociferously deny it.

After all, if you believe oil and gas and coal and most especially energy coal are killing the planet, how could a board of directors of good individual and merged conscience continue to draw some portion of their incomes from it.

Beyond of course, the most reasonable of period of transition. Lord make me pure, but just not too quickly; and all that.

The timing of BHP’s decidedly ‘the final die is cast’ exit from coal could not have been more exquisite.

Just as even Europe, even Dark-Green Germany, have finally woken up to the brutal reality of TINA, as the great Maggie Thatcher used to put it.

Simply, that, There Is No Alternative to fossil fuels – oil, gas and coal. Not that is, if you want to have a functioning economy and indeed society.

For all the trillions of dollars – nay, correction, tens of trillions of dollars – that have been poured into subsidising the, surprisingly expensive, for want of a better word, generation of ‘free’ energy from wind (when it is blowing) and sun (when it’s shining), the world still relies almost totally on, cough, cough, fossil fuels.

In 2019, according to the IEA, over 80 percent of global energy still came from, cough, cough, oil, gas and coal.

Well, gee, so-called renewables must therefore have leapt into double digits?

Well, actually, no.

The next biggest chunk, nearly 10 per cent, came from biofuels.

This is, bluntly, the burning of wood and waste and pumping out even more CO2 than coal.

That’s the burning of wood and waste in developing countries because they have no choice. And the burning of it in developed countries in a mindless charge towards an 18th century future.

After that came nuclear at 5 per cent and hydro – the ‘original’ renewable, now hated by Greens- around 2.5 per cent.

Bottom line: tens, tens of trillions of dollars got the world up to all of around 2-3 per cent from wind and solar.

And now, indirectly the shareholders of Whitehaven are the beneficiaries.

It’s paying $US3.2bn ($5bn) – and a possible further $US900m, depending on profits generated by the mines - to BHP, for two of its major met coal (for steel make) mines in Queensland’s coal regions.

Investors quickly pinged who got the better side of the deal, adding more than 10 per cent to Whitehaven’s share price and depositing nearly $600m into shareholder pockets.

One can only conclude by saying that one day a future BHP board will wake up to reality.

Originally published as Woke BHP’s $600m coal gift to Whitehaven Coal