While BHP’s energy coal tonnage remained flat for the September quarter at 18.06 million tonnes, the Hunter Valley mines picked up their pace.
Metallurgical coal production was also fairly flat, up 2% on the 2008 September quarter at 9.4Mt, but BHP said shipments were continuing to increase in response to stronger demand.
The mining giant’s Queensland coal mines produced 7.42Mt of metallurgical coal during the quarter and its Illawarra mines produced 2.26Mt of thermal and coking coal.
Energy coal production from South Africa was 8.3Mt, its New Mexico mines produced 4.16Mt, Colombia kicked in 2.35Mt and the Hunter Valley mines produced 2.38Mt.
During the quarter BHP gave the green light to the Mt Arthur coal mine expansion in the Hunter Valley.
The company will spend $US260 million on the 3.5Mtpa expansion with initial production expected in the first half of 2011.
BHP said the project was on schedule and on budget and was currently 20% complete.
The company also has several new South African mines in development, including the $450 million Kilpspruit mine and the $975 million Douglas-Middelburg optimisation.
Kilpspruit is expected to come online this year and is 98% complete.
Douglas-Middelburg is targeting initial production in the middle of next year and aims to produce 18.5Mtpa. It is 74% complete.
Commenting on the September quarter, BHP said Chinese economic growth was robust following strong consumption and infrastructure-based stimulus spending.
“China’s restock of commodities is essentially complete and there is now evidence of higher than normal stockpiles across the supply chain,” the company said.
“We continue to look for Chinese imports to more closely reflect real demand over the remainder of the 2009 calendar year.”
However, BHP remains cautious regarding growth in demand for commodities from developed economies.
“Despite the low metal inventories in developed economies, there is little evidence yet of sustainable demand for metals emerging post the northern summer,” the miner said.
“We continue to stress that this developed economy improvement is not without volatility and is from a very low base. We maintain our view that real demand follow-through in developed economies may not be transparent until mid-2010 calendar year.”
