BHP looks at options to expand Olympic Dam
Mining giant BHP Billiton is looking at options to expand its Olympic Dam mine in South Australia.
BHP put plans for a $US30 billion expansion of the massive site on ice in 2012, blaming falling commodity prices and higher costs.
But the company is now hoping to trial a hi-tech method of extracting minerals from ore at Olympic Dam and undertake financial modelling of expansion options.
BHP Billiton Olympic Dam Asset President Darryl Cuzzubbo said the company had invited experts from around the world to ensure all options are considered.
"We continue to research all options for expansion and initially focused on a divergent process where all options were evaluated to ensure that we left no stone unturned," Mr Cuzzubbo said in a speech in Adelaide on Friday.
"We are now applying financial analysis to determine the best possible future options."
Mr Cuzzubbo said the company was not taking the process lightly as it would likely shape the path of Olympic Dam for the rest of this century.
He said any expansion would be closely linked to efficiency gains as the operating cost of an expanded plant generally drove the return on capital.
"For us, the financial model of any planned expansion is naturally going to be based on our current operating cost which only reinforces the criticality of getting this right," he said.
Mr Cuzzubbo added that it was not only important to run Olympic Dam efficiently, but also the right way.
BHP Billiton has cut costs by $US6.6 billion over the past two years.
The company has recently been searching for cheaper ways to develop new smelting and extraction technologies to cut costs and offset lower commodity prices, trialing processes such as heap leaching to extract copper, uranium and precious metals from ores.
The company is seeking approval from the federal and South Australian governments to build a plant to carry out heap leaching at the copper, uranium, gold and silver mine 560km north of Adelaide.
Olympic Dam features the world's largest uranium deposit, and fourth largest copper and gold deposits.
