BHP steel and energy chief Bob Kirkby has foreshadowed sweeping changes to the company’s operational focus in the Bowen Basin. Confirming industry speculation that the future of many of the company’s large central Queensland opencut mines lies underground, Kirkby said BHP had closely watched new underground mine developments in the Bowen Basin and elsewhere during the 1990s.
"If you look at Gordonstone or Moranbah North they were $400 million to $500 million to go underground," he told a recent investment gathering. "We expect to go underground for $100 million. This is going to be a big move to reduce our operating costs at a very competitive capital cost."
BHP has contractor Allied Mining developing the Goonyella Exploration Adit at its huge Goonyella-Riverside openpit mine site. The GEA is the first stage in a plan to assess substantial longwall mining reserves which may be mined using the punch longwall mining method off an existing highwall. BHP maintains a high-capacity longwall operation could be established for as little as $100 million. A similar project is being examined at the Saraji opencut site.
Kirkby said BHP’s initial assessment of the mining approach proposed for Goonyella would be complete by the middle of this year, when the board would sit down to examine a full-scale underground operation. As with mines such as Oaky North in the Bowen Basin and South Bulga in New South Wales, a longwall operation at Goonyella could come in significantly under the cost of some other new generation underground mines because of the benefits offered by highwall access, including the ability to establish vital mine services and infrastructure on the surface (outside the mine portals), and BHP’s ability to use existing mine infrastructure at Goonyella.
"We are very confident that our assessments are going to be proved correct," Kirkby said. He said BHP had examined many of its central Queensland mine sites for future development opportunities and had identified "many prospective sites". Australia’s Longwalls, published by the producer of ILN, has previously reported BHP has at least six potential longwall mining sites at its existing opencut operations. Most are prospective punch mining projects.
"We have more options than any other coal company in Australia," Kirkby said.
