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Andrew Mackenzie is keen for the long haul at BHP Billiton (Financial Times – September 10, 2018)

https://www.ft.com/

After BHP Billiton announced results last month, its chief executive Andrew Mackenzie paused to reflect. “We have made BHP a much simpler, stunningly simple company,” he said as the miner declared a record final dividend.

Once the Anglo-Australian group completes the sale of its onshore US oil business later this year, Mr Mackenzie will preside over a company focused on just four commodities — copper, iron ore, coking coal and offshore oil — and 13 operated assets.

That’s very different from the company he took charge of in 2013, which had interests in 41 projects across 13 countries and six continents. But any suggestion that now might be a good time to step down is quickly dismissed by the Scotland-born geologist, who says he has many more ideas to improve the company.

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BHP buys into Ecuador copper project with $35 million SolGold stake – by Melanie Burton (Reuters U.S. – September 4, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/

(Reuters) – Global miner BHP (BHP.AX) has struck a deal to pay $35 million for a 6.1 percent stake in SolGold (SOLG.L), giving it a share in the promising Cascabel copper-gold project in Ecuador after an earlier attempt failed.

SolGold’s share price leapt around 17 percent as the market took BHP’s acquisition as a vote of confidence in the project, while BHP shares (BLT.L) slipped one percent by 1330 GMT.

BHP’s Chief Executive Andrew Mackenzie said the investment provided exposure to a high quality copper exploration project in Ecuador, a “highly prospective” location.

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Brazil’s Samarco mine unlikely to restart in 2019: BHP – by Marta Nogueira and Brad Haynes (Reuters U.S. – August 21, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – There is little likelihood that Brazil’s Samarco iron ore mine, a joint venture between Vale SA and BHP Billiton, will restart operations next year even though it expects to have all of the required licenses, a BHP spokesman said on Tuesday.

The statement confirmed comments made by another BHP official, Bryan Quinn, in an interview with newspaper Valor Economico.

Quinn, an executive in charge of the company’s mineral joint ventures, told Reuters in a separate interview that restarting operations at the disaster-struck mine depends on an agreement with prosecutors on building a new tailing dam system.

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BHP’s Costs Crash Diet Is Running Out of Steam – by David Fickling (Bloomberg News – August 20, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Going on a crash diet seems great while you’re shedding the pounds. The problem is sticking with it for the long term.

That’s what seems to be happening to the world’s miners, which have spent the years since the commodity boom peaked in 2011 holding down salaries, eking out efficiencies and extracting the highest-quality parts of their deposits to keep costs in line with deflating prices.

The cycle looks to be turning, though: Controllable cash costs at BHP Billiton Ltd. rose by $1.24 billion in the year through June, the company reported Tuesday, mainly because of declines in oil and gas fields, operational problems at two coking coal mines and issues around processing costs at two copper mines.

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Breakingviews – Copper-bottomed BHP can now dig into bigger issues – by Clara Ferreira-Marques (Reuters U.S. – August 20, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/

SINGAPORE (Reuters Breakingviews) – A copper-bottomed BHP can now dig into some tougher matters. The mining titan has reorganised its portfolio and, as full year results unveiled on Tuesday show, repaired its balance sheet.

Cash flows are near record levels last seen seven years ago. That means the board and boss Andrew Mackenzie can turn their attention to pricklier strategic issues including whether to stick with oil, gas and potash.

It has been a rocky ride for the $125 billion company. Business-cycle booms and busts are partly to blame, but bad decisions are, too. Moving into shale energy at the height of the fracking boom was one.

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U.S. Will Lose From Trade War as Flows Shift, Top Miner Says – by David Stringer and Rishaad Salamat (Bloomberg News – August 21, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

The U.S. risks losing out from its curbs on trade as rival nations including China will seek to do more business with each other, BHP Billiton Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Andrew Mackenzie warned as the head of the world’s largest miner stepped up his criticism of rising protectionism.

“There’s a lot of countries in the world that want to trade more with each other, now that it looks like the U.S. wants to trade less with them,” Mackenzie said in a Bloomberg Television interview, citing discussions with global trade ministers.

“China will absolutely look to walk in that area and look to find exports with other people,” he said after BHP reported earnings.

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Chile braces for potential strike at Escondida copper mine – by Antonio De la Jara (Reuters U.S. – August 13, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/

Aug 13 (Reuters) – Chile’s copper industry on Monday braced for the announcement of a potential strike at the world’s biggest copper mine, Escondida, as government-led mediation is expected to close by day’s end.

Escondida’s union and the mine’s owner, Anglo-Australian firm BHP , have until Monday evening to agree to a contract deal in tense negotiations that have been closely watched by other miners and international markets.

The negotiations have been held under tight wraps, but a union source told Reuters that “all will be known today” about negotiations at Escondida, which last year produced 925,400 tonnes of copper, almost 17 percent of the country’s total.

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BHP settles US class action over Samarco dam failure for $67 million – by Darren Gray (Sydney Morning Herald – August 9, 2018)

https://www.smh.com.au/

Mining giant BHP has agreed to settle a US class action claim relating to the Samarco dam failure of 2015, which triggered Brazil’s worst environmental disaster, and agreed to pay the plaintiffs $US50 million ($67.3 million).

The agreement comes with no admission of liability. It remains subject to approval by a US court. Melbourne-based lawyers acting for BHP investors in an Australian class action against the miner over the dam failure are watching the US legal developments with interest.

Brett Spiegel, a lawyer for the Melbourne-based law firm Phi, Finney, McDonald which filed the Australian class action in May in the Federal Court, welcomed the news from the US.

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Cat Calling, Whistling and Groping Greet Women in Mines of Chile – by Laura Millan Lombrana (Bloomberg News – August 8, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Despite efforts pushing for gender equality, the Chilean mining industry, slow to change, is still notoriously inhospitable to women.

The first time Karen Requena entered the cafeteria at BHP Billiton’s massive Escondida mining operation in northern Chile, she couldn’t help feeling countless eyes fixed on her body as she walked across the vast hall.

“It can’t get worse than that,” she thought. Then as Requena looked for a place to sit, the noise started. Thousands of men began banging their knives and forks against their plates. The pace of the deafening clattering picked up as she searched for an empty seat.

That’s how it went day in and day out at the world’s largest copper mine. It was 2012, and Requena was working 10-day shifts as an Escondida safety officer for BHP Billiton contractor Villatol. Soon she began eating in her room alone.

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BHP boosts nickel mining, exploration investment amid electric vehicle boom – by Melanie Burton (Reuters U.S. – August 6, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/

KALGOORLIE, Australia (Reuters) – Global miner BHP is plowing more investment into nickel mine development and exploration in Western Australia, seeking to secure its own supply of a key material in batteries needed to meet booming demand for electric cars.

BHP is building what is expected to be the world’s largest battery-grade nickel sulphate plant on the outskirts of Perth and is boosting output to be “as self-sufficient as possible”, asset president Eduard Haegel, told Reuters on the sidelines of the Diggers and Dealers mining conference in Kalgoorlie.

Nickel is in increasingly hot demand in new battery technologies that mean cars can travel further on a single charge. Using more nickel also cuts costs by reducing the amount of expensive cobalt, a mainstay of current electric vehicle (EV) battery technology.

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COLUMN-BHP, Rio deals show lack of options beyond shareholder returns – by Clyde Russell (Reuters U.S. – July 31, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/

LAUNCESTON, Australia, July 31 (Reuters) – Two recent deals by the world’s two biggest mining companies both looked positive for shareholders, but also underscore the challenges facing major commodity producers.

BHP Billiton last week agreed to sell its U.S. shale oil and gas assets for $10.5 billion, while Rio Tinto appears on track to exit its troubled investment in the giant Grasberg copper and gold mine in Indonesia for about $3.5 billion.

Both deals were generally well-received by investors, largely because they resolve long-running sores for the mining giants and will likely result in a return of the proceeds to shareholders.

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Rio Tinto, BHP, Vale tipped to report strongest ever quarterly iron ore exports – by Peter Ker (Australian Financial Review – July 15, 2018)

https://www.afr.com/

The world’s three biggest iron ore miners are expected to confirm the industry’s strongest ever quarterly export figures this week, helping to explain recent weakness in prices for the bulk commodity.

Big miners have exercised restraint in both supply and rhetoric in recent years in a bid to calm fears the iron ore market could be flooded with supply, but port statistics suggest the miners’ inexorable export growth reached new heights in the three months to June 30.

Brazilian miner Vale is expected to announce record quarterly production of 96.3 million tonnes when it kicks off reporting season early on Tuesday morning Australian time, and Rio Tinto is expected to report strong numbers of its own several hours later.

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Labor talks at BHP’s Escondida mine in Chile enter ‘home stretch’ – by Dave Sherwood and Antonio De la Jara (Reuters U.S. – July 6, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/

SANTIAGO (Reuters) – Labor negotiations at BHP Billiton Plc Escondida copper mine in Chile, the world’s largest, are entering into the final three weeks before a 30-month contract expires at the end of July.

The closely watched talks come little more than one year after failure to reach a labor deal at the sprawling deposit led to a 44-day strike that jolted the global copper market.

BHP and the union have reached agreement on about one-fifth of the “points of interest,” raised by either party, according to an internal union document seen by Reuters that summarized progress in negotiations during the month of June.

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Rio and BHP to win from China’s blue-sky wars – by Matthew Stevens(Australian Financial Review – July 5, 2018)

https://www.afr.com/

China has moved to further embed pollution controls across a broader sweep of its industrial landscape in a move that reinforces the shared view of Australia’s biggest miners that price premiums being earned by quality iron ore and coal are now enrichingly structural.

A new three-year action plan announced on the official government website more than doubles the number of major cities targeted for pollution with the migration of the regime south beyond the provinces that surround Beijing to the Yangtze delta and Shanghai.

Confirmation of reforms that were first flagged towards the end of last winter’s successful blue-skies campaign acts as reinforcement of BHP’s planned changes to the Pilbara product mix and of Rio Tinto’s pursuit of mining capacity flexibility that will allow it to best respond to China’s increasingly seasonal raw-materials demand pull.

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Samarco could reach partial deal with Brazil prosecutors on Monday – by Marta Nogueira (Reuters U.S. – June 25, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – Samarco, a joint venture between Brazilian miner Vale and Anglo-Australian BHP Billiton, could reach the second phase of a settlement with Brazilian prosecutors over a 2015 environmental disaster on Monday, a federal prosecutor said.

The mining disaster, Brazil’s worst on record, was caused by the bursting of a tailings dam and killed 19 people. Samarco’s operations have been suspended since then.

“This deal we are negotiating is aimed at perfecting the governance system of (a prior agreement), creating reports and damage assessments and empowering those affected,” Brazil’s federal prosecutor for the case José Adércio Sampaio said, without offering details.

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