BHP Billiton flags increase in copper output

BHP Billiton has flagged a 27% increase in copper production at the Olympic Dam mine in Australia from 2018, and a doubling from that level subsequently by a low-risk underground expansion with significantly lower capital intensity than the previous open cut design.  

"This has the potential to deliver more than 450,000 tonnes of copper production a year at first quartile C1 costs by the middle of the next decade," the company said.

The uranium implications are not mentioned in the statement, but assuming the same ore, it would mean 4200 tU from 2018 and some 8000 tU in mid-2020s - equivalent to Canada's McArthur River, currently the biggest uranium mine in the world.

In July, BHP Billiton applied for government approval to build a demonstration-scale heap leaching plant at its Olympic Dam mine, as the company looks for more economical ways of expanding the South Australian project.

Olympic Dam has been operating as an underground copper and gold mine, with uranium as a significant by-product, since 1988. Environmental approvals were granted for a large-scale expansion to include an open pit adjacent to the existing underground mine workings in 2011, but in mid-2012 the company announced that it was putting the project on hold while it looked into alternative less capital-intensive development options.

Heap leaching - a technique of treating crushed ore, usually with acid, over a long period to extract the uranium - is an alternative BHP Billiton is considering.

Unlike BHP's former expansion plans, it would appear that the proposed heap-leaching method would enable all the copper recovery to be carried out on-site, without the need to transport any of the copper concentrate elsewhere for smelting.

Olympic Dam currently produces close to 4000 tonnes U3O8 per year and around 180,000 tonnes of copper.

Researched and written
by World Nuclear News