BHP Billiton intends to increase tailings storage

The Australian newspaper reported on January 12th that BHP Billiton wanted to increase the tailings storage capacity of the South Australia Olympic Dam's copper mines and mines to a height of 13 stories, and then the price of commodities will go down. The situation has decreased and costs are low.

According to the report, BHP stated in the document submitted to the federal government that it hopes to have a specification of "4th tail storage facility" (process tailings refers to the processing waste left after the metal is separated from iron ore) from 30 meters. Increase to 40 meters. This is not the final plan for the expansion of Olympic Dam by BHP. Instead, it is an amendment to the existing mining plan. According to the existing plan, BHP will need to add a new tailings storage tank by 2017. The requirement to expand the existing storage scale is because BHP hopes to realize cost-reducing projects under the situation where the price of its key products has fallen. BHP said that the main reason for not wishing to build a new tailings storage tank is the increasing environmental impact of land clearing and the associated risks to local birds caused by continuous surface damage.

BHP pointed out that the possibility of a significant environmental impact caused by increasing the storage height to 40 meters "will be negligibly small." Although the decline in copper ore prices does not include other commodities with higher BHP earnings, such as oil, iron ore, and coal mines, the decline is still very significant.

Last weekend, the New York copper market closed at 2.75 yuan per pound, which was the lowest since June 2010 and has fallen by 50 cents in the past six months, which is equivalent to a 15% decline. For BHP, the average price of copper fell 50 cents a year, which means that net income decreased by 1.5 billion US dollars.