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SA coal not ex-growth, says BHP Billiton Posted: Fri, 01 Jun 2007 [miningmx.com] -- BHP BILLITON's South African coal assets ranked the most challenging under its control, but the group was not retreating from the sector, said Vincent Maphai, chairman of BHP Billiton SA. "We have had the greatest operational challenges in [South African] coal and last year we had three fatalities which is frightening," he said in an interview with Miningmx. "Coal is under constant review because we have the greatest challenges. But this is not an ex-growth industry for us." Maphai's comments follow an announcement on May 31 that BHP Billiton had sold about one million of export entitlement through the Richards Bay Coal Terminal (RBCT) to Exxaro Resources, a diversified empowerment company. BHP Billiton, which unveiled South African Marius Kloppers as its new CEO from October on May 31, announced earlier in the year it wanted to sell some six million tonnes of its annual export allocation through RBCT. All in all, BHP Billiton has or will divest itself of up to nine million tonnes/year of South African coal production. Output from BHP Billiton's South African coal operations in the year to June 2006 was approximately 27 million tonnes. However, BHP Billiton has been fighting the perception it was completely withdrawing from South African energy coal. The company also relocated headquarters for energy, previously in Johannesburg, to Australia which has helped stoke the suspicions. "In Douglas, we're trying to expand. But our decisions are commercially driven," said Maphai. "There are some very big projects under review and we're in dialogue with the DME (minerals and energy department) about them," he said. The right to BHP Billiton's one million tonne entitlement will become effective for Exxaro Resources on July 1 and it is in addition to the 2.5 million tonnes/year RBCT entitlement Exxaro was awarded through a recent subscription process. Some 800,000 tonnes/year were acquired last year following Kumba Resources' merger with Eyesizwe Coal which created Exxaro. On completion of the RBCT Phase V expansion, scheduled by the second quarter of 2009, Exxaro will acquire a further two million tonnes/year taking Exxaro’s total entitlement increasing to 6.3 million tonnes/year, it said. Click Here to subscribe to our daily newsletter
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