In its H2 2018 results, BHP reports that underground operations continue to progress into the Southern Mine Area of Olympic Dam, with record development kilometres achieved and the mine’s third decline becoming fully operational in the fourth quarter 2018. Olympic Dam copper production increased by 20% to 65,000 t as a result of the major smelter maintenance campaign in the prior period, which was partially offset by an unplanned acid plant outage in August 2018. Surface operations resumed at the end of October 2018 following completion of acid plant remediation works. Overall production guidance for the 2019 financial year remains unchanged at between 170,000 and 180,000 t.
In November 2018, BHP confirmed identification of a potential new iron oxide, copper, gold (IOCG) mineralised system, located 65 km to the south east of BHP’s operations at Olympic Dam in South Australia. BHP is evaluating and interpreting the results reported and planning a further drilling program, to commence early in the 2019 calendar year.
