PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Diversified miner BHP would not be averse to entering new jurisdictions in its hunt for resources, and could make a return to Africa, CEO Mike Henry has said.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Henry noted that in its hunt for future facing commodities, BHP would need to find more opportunities to grow.

“I have been clear that we are focused on four levers. One is innovation. BHP has lots of copper units and lots of nickel units. The question is how many of those units are developable economically,” Henry said. 

“Through innovation, we want to be able to unlock more of the resources that we already have. The second area of focus is on the exploration front. We have increased our activity in that space substantially. The third area is early-stage entry. Of course, mergers and acquisitions remains a lever, but that is something that we need to be really disciplined about. We need to pursue the right opportunities at the right point in the right construct.”

Speaking to BHP’s willingness to enter into new jurisdictions, or return to Africa, Henry noted that it would be dependent on the exploration opportunity presented.

“From a capability perspective, I am confident that we have the capabilities to pursue opportunities in what some would see as tougher jurisdictions, but of course the size of the opportunity needs to be commensurate with the increased management effort that is going to be required to pursue opportunities in jurisdictions that we may not currently be operating in.

“But would we contemplate pursuing attractive enough opportunities? Sure, but I also want to be clear that we do not see exploration success as being confined to moving into new jurisdictions. We know that there is lots more copper to be found in the jurisdictions that we like, but it is going to be harder to find and perhaps deeper, which is going to bring different technological and financial challenges to its development.

“There is a real focus within the BHP exploration team on securing those large deposits as well. We will do so through building internal capability around understanding the earth’s crust and geoscience.  Having secured those sorts of new opportunities, we have to have the technical know-how to develop those efficiently and reliably. We are building that capability within the company as well,” Henry said.