BHP Billiton’s Marius Kloppers’ strategy for uranium

Bear in mind too that BHP has its foot on the world’s biggest uranium deposit, at Olympic Dam in South Australia……..Olympic Dam, currently in the planning stages for a huge expansion, was key to BHP’s strategy to limit the impact of the resources rent tax and clearly it is central to its future energy strategy.

Kloppers plays strategic card by backing a carbon tax, Sydney Morning Herald,  Ian Verrender, September 18, 2010 “……Kloppers is no fool. Quite the contrary. Softly spoken with an uncharacteristically lilting Afrikaans accent, the youthful head of BHP Billiton is a master strategist, not just when it comes to commerce and digging holes but in the not-so-gentle art of political persuasion….

….it was Kloppers who called the truce, who knew precisely when to cut the deal with a newly installed Julia Gillard, conceding ground on what he knew would be an inevitability: a resources rent tax………..The Prime Minister was allowed to look a winner. But the tax was emasculated, struck at a level that represented a huge victory for BHP and the industry……..

….He’s advocating a carbon tax, and only the limited use of an emissions trading scheme. Why? Because a tax would be set at a particular level whereas the price of carbon under an ETS could fluctuate wildly…..

Most of BHP’s thermal coal businesses are operated outside Australia. It owns huge operations in South Africa, South America and the US. So any imposition of a new tax in Australia is likely to have only a limited impact.

Bear in mind too that BHP has its foot on the world’s biggest uranium deposit, at Olympic Dam in South Australia……..

Olympic Dam, currently in the planning stages for a huge expansion, was key to BHP’s strategy to limit the impact of the resources rent tax and clearly it is central to its future energy strategy.

Kloppers plays strategic card by backing a carbon tax

September 17, 2010 - Posted by Christina MacPherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming, energy, people, uranium | antinuclear, Australia, BHP, BHP Billiton, carbon, climate change, climate change - global warming, energy, nuclear, Olympic Dam, uranium