BHP Billiton

[Springbok]

For those of you who are not aware of the mining activities at BHP's Olympic Dam mine at Roxby Downs, have a look here:

Olympic Dam Expansion Project

Olympic Dam information

As the newspapers report:

"BHP Billiton is expected to announce this week that it has uncovered what is potentially the largest gold resources in the world at its Olympic Dam mine at Roxby Downs in South Australia, 560km north of Adelaide. The company will release its resource upgrade for the copper, gold and uranium mine, as part of its annual report on Wednesday. The operation is the largest underground mine in Australia and houses the largest uranium deposit in the world. Olympic Dam is primarily a copper-uranium operation, producing gold and silver as by-products. The mine produced about 204,000 tonnes of copper, 3936 tonnes of uranium oxide and 107,500 ounces of gold during fiscal year 2006. BHP chief executive Marius Kloppers said recently that while the development timeline for Olympic Dam had slipped a little, it was important to get the job done right. 'We remain absolutely confident that Olympic Dam will be the pre-eminent supplier of uranium, underpinning much of the nuclear renaissance that is being experienced as a response to the greenhouse concerns that the world currently is seeking solutions for,' Mr Kloppers said.

Adelaide should have a bright future resulting from this!

[Nilo]

Springbok!

Wa kry jy al hierie goed? Wat lees jy? Dink jy as ek jou eendag face to face ontmoet ek jou enigsins gaan kan verstaan, jys "far more superior" as ek, daarvan is ek dem sure!!

Doe so voort

Nilo

NS Sien die Marius ou moet 'n Suid Afrikaner wees.

Edited September 24, 2007 by Nilo

[Springbok]

Nilo, ha-ha! nee ek is niemand se superior nie, maar net BAIE geinteresseerd in sekere dinge. Aandele is een van my passies in die lewe, gedurig op die uitkyk vir tendense in finansiële markte en soek goeie besighede om in te belê. BHP Billiton is 'n BEAUT en ja, Dr. Marius Kloppers is 'n ex-Saffer en die nuwe CEO vanaf Maandag 1 Okt. Not bad for a 44-year old! Hy het onlangs baie positiewe geluide gemaak oor BHP se toekoms, hou maar die koerante dop Woensdag as BHP se resultate uitkom.

Sover ek weet is daar 'n lughawe by Olympic Dam en kan die publiek 'n toer van die myn doen - behoort verseker 'n belewenis te wees om hierdie monster van 'n myn van naderby te kan aanskou!

"BHP Billiton runs two hour public tours of the Olympic Dam surface operations every Monday, Thursday and Friday, leaving at 9am from the Roxby Downs town centre. Bookings are essential as tours book out quickly - contact the Roxby Downs Cultural and Leisure Precinct on +61 (8) 8671 2001. Tours are run on a gold coin donation basis with proceeds going to the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS)."

More about Marius Kloppers:

http://www.worldbusinesslive.com/Career/Ar...arius-kloppers/

Edited September 24, 2007 by Springbok

[DesV]

Sover ek weet is daar 'n lughawe by Olympic Dam en kan die publiek 'n toer van die myn doen - behoort verseker 'n belewenis te wees om hierdie monster van 'n myn van naderby te kan aanskou!

Jy is reg daar is a lughawe by Olympic dam maar jy moet via Adelaide vlieg.

Des

[Springbok]

BHP Billiton's annual general meeting will be held in Adelaide on 28 November 2007:

Adelaide Hilton Centre

233 Victoria Square

Adelaide, South Australia

Wednesday, 28 November 2007 at 10.30am.

Should be worth while attending for those of you in Adelaide and considering an investment in the shares of this mining giant.

For further information contact:

Jane Belcher, Investor Relations

Tel: +61 3 9609 3952 Mobile: +61 417 031 653

email: Jane.H.Belcher@bhpbilliton.com

Announcement Of Terms Of Contract For Incoming CEO Marius Kloppers

Investment presentations

Edited September 26, 2007 by Springbok

[Springbok]

The latest update:

BHP Billiton has almost doubled the resources at its Olympic Dam mine in South Australia. The world's biggest mining company revealed in its annual report today that drilling by a reported 20 rigs has increased the total resource from 4.43 billion tonnes to 7.738 billion tonnes. BHP Billiton also reported 117 million tonnes of non-sulphide gold resources, which translates to about 80 million ounces of gold contained in the ground.

BHP Billiton picked up the massive Olympic Dam copper-uranium mine in 2005 after it acquired WMC Resources for $9.2 billion. The operation is the biggest underground mine in Australia and houses the world's largest uranium deposit and the fourth largest copper deposit. The mine produced about 182,500 tonnes of copper, 3,486 tonnes of uranium oxide and 91,700 ounces of gold during fiscal year 2007. BHP Billiton is conducting a feasibility study into a planned $6 billion expansion of the mine, which would more than double the operation's copper output to 500,000 tonnes per annum.

Seems the company remains optimistic about its own prospects, as it is still buying its own shares, the latest tranche being 750,000 ordinary shares of BHP Billiton Plc at an average price of 1710.64 pence per ordinary share in London. That is £12.8 million, or A$30 million. Following this transaction, BHP Billiton Plc holds 24,310,000 of its ordinary shares as treasury shares and BHP Billiton Limited holds 44,816,226 of the ordinary shares in BHP Billiton Plc, for a total of 69,126,226 shares. The total number of BHP Billiton Plc ordinary shares in issue (excluding shares held as treasury shares and shares held by BHP Billiton Limited) is 2,258,899,062.

More details here:

Annual review (PDF file)

Annual report (PDF file)

Sustainability report (PDF file)

[woodag]

BHP Billiton's annual general meeting will be held in Adelaide on 28 November 2007:

Adelaide Hilton Centre

233 Victoria Square

Adelaide, South Australia

Wednesday, 28 November 2007 at 10.30am.

Should be worth while attending for those of you in Adelaide and considering an investment in the shares of this mining giant.

. . .

In order to attend the meeting, I thought that you already had to be a shareholder?

I do have some shares (too few!) but I won't travel all the way to Adelaide to attend - I will have to wait until they have a meeting closer to home. It is normal for large Aussie companies to hold the AGMs around the country in different capital cities each year.

With BHP Billiton you may well hope that past performance might just really be an indication of future performance. I bought my shares around 10 years ago (then BHP sans Billiton) and taking into account various demergers and bonuses, the shares are now worth over 6 times what I paid for them.

[Springbok]

In order to attend the meeting, I thought that you already had to be a shareholder?

yes that's correct.

With BHP Billiton you may well hope that past performance might just really be an indication of future performance. I bought my shares around 10 years ago (then BHP sans Billiton) and taking into account various demergers and bonuses, the shares are now worth over 6 times what I paid for them.

usually a very dangerous assumption to extend the present into the future, but then again why would the company STILL buy its own shares at these record high prices? They seem to think that Olympic Dam have enough reserves in the ground to keep it in production for 100 years! The new CEO, Marius Kloppers, is known to be much more aggressive than the outgoing CEO, Chip Goodyear. Let's just hope he doesn't become too ambitious...

Seems it may be a good idea to invest in property in Roxby Downs too...

Today's headlines:

Trillion-dollar mine for BHP

BHP Billiton is sitting on more than $1 trillion worth of copper, uranium and gold at its gigantic Olympic Dam deposit in South Australia, after yesterday reporting a near doubling in ore resources. The increase is set to support mining at Olympic Dam and the tiny town of Roxby Downs, 560km north of Adelaide, for 100 years or more. BHP Billiton is, however, facing a huge construction bill that could blow out to as much as $US15billion ($17.2 billion), according to analysts. First production from any expansion isn't expected until 2013. South Australian premier Mike Rann said the increased resource figures were "about the best news economically that this state has ever received". "About 17 rigs have been drilling continuously and still cannot find the extent of the resource - they can't find the perimeters, they can't find an end to the depth of it," Mr Rann said.

BHP flags mother of all lodes

Olympic Dam in outback South Australia will become the world's biggest mine as BHP Billiton doubles its output to create a bonanza that will fuel the state and national economy for a century or more. The multi-billion-dollar expansion, revealed as BHP increased by 75 per cent its estimate of Olympic Dam's deposits of gold, copper and uranium, was trumpeted by Premier Mike Rann as "about the best news this state has ever received". "What we're celebrating today is that the world's biggest resource is twice as big as we previously thought," Mr Rann said yesterday. "We're celebrating the fact that the Olympic Dam mine, that was originally going to be around for 30-40 years ... will now be around for 100 years." Locals in the nearby community of Roxby Downs were wondering how their desert town would cope, with the expansion of the mine expected to create 6000 jobs. Planning is well advanced to expand Roxby Downs, 550km north of Adelaide, from 4000 people to as many as 12,000. But the detail - such as shifting the airport, where the extra workers will live and where their children will go to school - remain to be settled. However, as Roxby Downs Tavern manager Clint Gow-Smith noted, there's plenty of land for housing in a desert. "Exciting stuff, isn't it?" Mr Gow-Smith said of yesterday's news. "We all know that we're a bit of a boom town but everybody here just goes about their business." He said the town could handle growing to 12,000 people, providing infrastructure such as sewerage and waterworks kept pace. Roxby Downs administrator Bill Boehm said most of the answers about the town expansion lay with BHP and the state Government. Mr Boehm said the council would not accept being short-changed on infrastructure - roads, footpaths, drains and kerbs - if development ran ahead of the council's expanding rates base.