“However after all, the scale of the chance must be commensurate with the elevated administration effort that’s going to be required to pursue alternatives in jurisdictions that we could not at the moment be working in,” Henry mentioned.
His feedback adopted reviews this week that BHP is buying into a project in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Bloomberg reported the corporate is already holding talks with billionaire Robert Friedland’s Ivanhoe Mines (TSE: IVN) over an exploration web site adjoining to Ivanhoe’s Kamoa-Kakula mine, referred to as Western Foreland.
This additionally coincides with DRC Prime Minister Jean-Michel Sama Lukonde’s declared intention of attractive extra funding into its huge copper and cobalt deposits.
BHP’s high boss famous that whereas the corporate gained’t draw back from difficult mining jurisdictions, it’s open to discover in “areas we like” despite the fact that they contain greater prices.
“I need to be clear we don’t see exploration success as being confined to shifting into new jurisdictions. We all know there’s extra copper to be discovered within the areas we like however it’ll be more durable to seek out and maybe deeper, which goes to deliver totally different technological and monetary challenges,” he mentioned.
Hydrogen-based steelmaking
Commenting on Fortescue Metals’ (ASX: FMG) foray into green hydrogen to assist environment-friendly metal manufacturing, Henry mentioned BHP doesn’t consider that that may be an excellent use of shareholder capital.
“Hydrogen can have its day, nevertheless it’s going will take a while to get there given present economics… and the large amount of capital wanted to develop inexperienced direct discount iron (DRI),” Henry mentioned. It may price “many a whole bunch of billions of {dollars}” to decarbonize the world’s whole metal trade utilizing inexperienced hydrogen-based direct decreased iron, he mentioned.
One main issue to contemplate is that most of the world’s main blast furnaces, together with in China and India, nonetheless have 20-30 years’ helpful life left. The trade wants to contemplate the “sunk capital” in these blast furnaces, Henry famous.
“The economics of that may show to be too difficult …. for a speedy swap to hydrogen,” he mentioned, including that BHP expects hydrogen “to amplify inroads in two to 3 many years’ time.”