Australia's BHP to Spend $900 on Exploration Next Fiscal

Melbourne based BHP Billiton will spend $900 million in next financial year on exploration for oil and copper.

“Next financial year, we intend to invest approximately $900 million dollars in exploration, which represents 18 per cent of our overall capital budget,” said BHP Billiton Head of Geoscience, Laura Tyler, while speaking at Citigroup’s Mining Exploration Day in Sydney.

BHP will focus on exploring hydrocarbons in the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean (in Trinidad & Tobago and Barbados), and the Northern Beagle sub-basin off the coast of Western Australia.

Its copper exploration would target Chile, Peru, the United States, Canada and Australia.

“We are investing at a time when most in our sector continue to reduce discretionary spend,” she said. “Over the last four years we have developed a new approach to petroleum exploration that is much more focused.”

She informed that drilling has commenced in Trinidad and Tobago and an additional rig has been secured which will soon commence drilling in a prospective block north of our Shenzi operations in the Gulf of Mexico.

“We are also challenging existing paradigms with a scientific based and disciplined approach to exploration.  We have reduced exploration operating costs by 70 per cent since 2013, and this year we have increased the targets tested by 44 per cent,” she stated.