Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the first session of our thirty eighth Annual Global Metals Mining and Steel Conference. I'm Jason Fairclough. I run metals and mining for Bank of America here in Europe and EMEA. I'm joined today by my colleague James Redfern, who's Head of Australia Resources Research.
We work together covering the dual listed minors, so BHP and Rio. So first, this is our second year during this conference virtually. We're certainly hoping it is the last. And I would really like to thank the companies and our investor clients for supporting us through this challenging period. We do have around 1,000 people signed up for this conference.
We're very pleased with the participation. Now on behalf of James and myself, we're very pleased to introduce and welcome our first CEO speaker, Mike Henry from BHP. Mike is a very seasoned mining executive. He's held many different senior positions at BHP before being appointed as CEO last year. I'll just explain the format for everyone's benefit.
Mike will be making some opening comments with a few slides and then we'll move to our fireside chat discussion. There's an opportunity to ask questions via the Veracast panel. If you have questions, feel free to add it using the same system that you've used to log in. James and I will see those questions and we'll try to work them into the discussion. With that, we'll invite Mike to make his opening remarks.
Mike, over to you.
Well, thank you, Jason. It's great to have the opportunity to to join you again. Although I have to agree with you next year, hopefully, it's in person. Just before I turn to the main topics I'm going to speak to today, I did want to start by saying just how pleased I am with how the company is performing. We're safer, delivering more reliable performance.
And this, coupled with the quality of our assets and our disciplined cost control, is allowing us to secure maximum benefit from the record high iron ore and copper prices that we're seeing currently. We've delivered a number of major projects in the past twelve months, the 185,000 ton per annum expansion of the Spence copper asset, Atlantis Phase 3 in the Ruby project in petroleum. And in the next few days, we will announce first production at the 80,000,000 ton per Annum South Flank iron ore project with its higher grade and lump fraction, all brought in, I might say on time and on budget in spite of COVID-nineteen, and perfectly timed given where copper and iron ore prices are at. Now we have the counter cyclical acquisition of an extra stake in the Shinsey asset and petroleum as well, and we've secured more exploration partnerships and early stage growth opportunities in copper and nickel. And finally, we've made market progress on our efforts to reduce operational emissions and have signed a number of partnerships with others in the value chain targeted at reducing scope three emissions.
So overall, the company is really going well at the moment. Now building upon this strong near term performance, though, today, I do want to talk about two things. Firstly, the critical need for resources in meeting the world's decarbonization challenge and to support global economic growth and development. And secondly, BHP's commitment to playing a leading role in ensuring that these demands get met sustainably. We are optimistic for the future.
We believe the world can both decarbonize and achieve the higher living standards that people aspire to, and we're at the center of both of these aims. Recent times have seen greater uncertainty and volatility in markets and geopolitics and growing expectations on the part of shareholders, communities and broader society. In addition, there's increasing technical and financial challenges in finding and developing the fresh supply required in some commodities. Successful companies will be those with a clear strategy and sense of purpose, who are exceptional operators and allocators of capital, and who are in tune with the changing world around them, and then who focus on bringing all this together to create long term value for all their stakeholders. This is BHP.
We have built the organizational capability, relationships, and balance sheet strength to allow us to thrive in this environment. The outlook for our commodities is compelling. Government stimulus and pro growth agendas, which we do expect are going to remain in place for for an extended period, are anticipated to lead to robust growth, a lift in inflation, and solid demand for mineral resources and oil and gas. And this is occurring at a time when our industry's capital discipline and decline in exploration success over a number of years now, means that there's fewer high quality growth projects in the industry pipeline to meet this demand. The drive to more rapidly decarbonize the globe may also accelerate demand for many of the products that we produce.
A growing number of governments are committing to tackling climate change with greater ambition and are cooperating to do so. A transition to a world where warming is limited to no more than 1.5 degrees above pre industrial levels is positive for BHP and would allow us to create significant value. In a Paris alliance scenario, we expect a more than doubling of the amount of primary copper, and a quadrupling of the amount of primary nickel demand over the next thirty years, as was produced over the last thirty. Demand for steel will almost double on this basis, and potash will be vital for more efficient agricultural practices. And as a shift to cleaner energy sources occurs, the world will still need oil and gas to power mobility and everyday life on its pathway to decarbonization.
So the world is going to need more supply of some commodities in order to continue to grow and to make the transition to cleaner energy. The level of global effort, innovation and coordination to limit warming to 1.5 degrees is massive. However, the commitment and intention for the future is becoming clearer. At BHP, for over one hundred and thirty years, we've been reliably providing our customers with high quality supply of the commodities they need for the world to grow and for the world to grow. Like our purposes, we have been bringing people and resources together to build a better world.
Now the world is continuing to evolve, and it's doing so in a way that plays to BHP's strengths. We're running our operations exceptionally well. We're safer, more reliable, and more productive than ever before. We've now had almost two and a half years fatality free, an exceptional result. And our two largest assets, Western Australian iron ore and our Escondida copper mine, have continued to set production and throughput records while delivering excellent cost performance.
We remain hungry to improve. We've redoubled our focus on becoming even safer. We are systematically unlocking even greater performance from our equipment and infrastructure. And we're enabling our people and are investing in capability, be it in trade skills through our Future Fit Academy and Operations Services, or technical skills through our centers of excellence. And we're underpinning this by ensuring we have an inclusive and diverse workforce.
Our portfolio is well positioned. We produce commodities essential to everyday life, global economic growth, and the energy transition. Around 60% of our production is in commodities that support steelmaking, which we anticipate will see strong demand as the world decarbonizes. Around onefour of our portfolio is currently in future facing commodities, which for us are copper, nickel and potash, and we expect to grow this over the coming years. This includes an increase in average copper production over the next five years of more than 300,000 tons per annum, equivalent to adding another Spence to the portfolio.
Given our rock solid foundations of a strong balance sheet and disciplined approach to capital allocation, we are positioned well to be able to continue to pursue new opportunities for growth. As we've done for over a century, we will continue to meet the world's changing and growing demand for commodities. There is still an obvious tension between the world's need for more resources and need to make the world more sustainable, both for the for people and for the environment. And it's essential that both are achieved. Growing demand must be met ever more sustainably, and this requires alignment between resources companies like BHP, investors and society on how best to navigate this tension.
Better alignment will enable the transition to be achieved more sustainably, quickly and cost effectively. Conversely, a lack of alignment will result in poor sustainability outcomes and slower and more costly progress on the energy transition. BHP is committed to continuing to create value for shareholders and all of its stakeholders. We will continue to demonstrate leadership on sustainability, including on climate change. And we've been taking real action on climate change for decades.
Most of our assets are already at the lower end of the respective emissions intensity curves, and we are working to lower them further, consistent with our commitment to reduce operational emissions by at least 30% by 2030 and to be net zero by 02/1950, a number of our assets are on the way to having a substantial portion or even all of their electricity provided by renewables. Beyond greening our electricity supplies, we will decarbonize our mining equipment through displacing diesel. Now this is a much more complex task, but we are partnering with industry and equipment manufacturers transition. Outside our operations, we're working with others in our value chain to develop solutions for hard to abate emissions. For example, we're working with some of the world's leading steelmakers and with technology startups to identify pathways and develop technologies to reduce steelmaking emissions.
Over the past six months, we have established partnerships with three major steelmakers in China and Japan, whose combined output equates to around 10% of global steel production, more than that produced in all of Europe. And as one of the world's largest bulk freight charters, we are working with the maritime industry to support greener freight. We've pioneered the world's first tender for LNG fueled bulk carriers. We've successfully completed a trial of marine biofuels. And just last month, we were the only resources company to become a founding member of the Maritime Decarbonization Centre to be set up in Singapore.
These actions are aligned with our commitment to addressing climate change by reducing our own emissions, and by working with partners to reduce emissions in the value chains in which we operate. We believe the future is increasingly clear, and our strategy, portfolio, capabilities, and approach to social value position us to play an important role in meeting the twin objectives of an accelerated energy transition and continued economic development and improvement in living standards. We're committed to doing so sustainably, and we're well placed to generate great returns and value for shareholders, and to support others to grow and prosper. Thank you, Jason, and back to you.
That's great, Mike. Thanks for those opening remarks. So now we have our fireside chat. And just to remind everyone, audience members can ask questions via the Veracast panel, and James and I will try to work those in. We do have a couple of pre prepared questions, so let's start with just a couple of those.
Mike, maybe a bit of an obvious question, but sometimes obvious is good. So BHP is the largest mining company in the world, enterprise value approaching $200,000,000,000 As a CEO, this must bring some special challenges in terms of management, but also in terms of capital allocation. Can you give us a little bit of context here and talk about how you and the organization address this?
Well, sure, Jason. So let me just start by just saying again that I think in the current environment, we do have a number of very strong advantages that give us the edge. And some of those accrue as a result of scale. But of course, scale does bring with it its own unique challenges as you put around management and and around capital allocation. There the way I put it is a different challenge.
It's not necessarily greater, but but different. Now how do we seek to to to deal with that is, well, first of all, by having a very clear winning strategy and sticking to it. So everybody's focused on on on on that winning strategy. Second of all is is that, you know, we price simplicity. So as a means of ensuring that that scale doesn't lead to unnecessary complexity, we really do price simplicity, and that is in portfolio, processes, corporate structure.
We're focused on simplicity. And and in the case of portfolio, the one thing I would draw your attention to is that whilst we're big, that scale comes from a relatively small number of very large, very high quality assets in relatively few commodities and relatively few geographies. Now, in addition to that, we focused on building capability and culture to allow us to drive performance at pace. And I think you've seen us demonstrating that in over a number of periods now. And so it's that combination of how we think about the organization, how we think about capability and culture that allows us to continue to to drive value.
Now the final one that I get on the table is just the old do companies get to a point where they're too big to grow? I've spoken about the case for BHP actually having some clear advantages and our ability to secure opportunities to meet the world's need for the commodities to support the transition. First focus is, of course, on driving even greater value out of our current assets. And you've seen us doing that again for multiple periods now through productivity, but also through executing very well. Options that we have in the portfolio, brownfield and greenfield.
But there's more to do. We want to replenish the covered of options for for the future. We've had the benefit of of the work of previous generations of management in terms of the options they've created for us. We now want to replenish that covered for the future and specifically in the future facing commodities.
Thanks, Mike. It's James here. Mike, you talked about a potential pivot to future facing commodities BHP being copper, nickel and potentially potash. How do you think about your optionality in copper and nickel? Do you have any shovel ready projects?
And also in copper specifically, do you have growth options as many investors in the world globally is calling out for more copper? Thank you.
Well, so James, again, we want to be we we want more. You know, we've made this a clear area of of focus. But, and the way I would put it is probably I don't know if I'd term it a pivot. It's more an up weighting in future facing, commodities. But I would just, again, point out that we're already the world's third largest copper producer, fourth largest producer of of class one, nickel.
And, we've got, you know, roughly 20% growth or 300 just over 300,000 tons per annum growth coming in copper production over the next five years because of the efforts we've had underway to stabilize smelter operations at Olympic Dam. Obviously, the Spence growth option coming on and then the growth that we'll have at Escondida in part because of some higher grade, but we'll achieve the 1,200,000 tons per annum average production over the next five years at Escondida. So some solid growth ahead of us, but we need to create more options. Now how are we going to go about doing that? Well, first focus is on bringing innovation to bear on being able to economically recover more of the resource that we already have in place because we have lots of copper.
We have lots of nickel. If we can bring innovation to bear on how we go about unlocking more of those resources, that's first prize for us. But we're also increasing our effort in exploration. In early stage entry, we've had, you know, some some reasonable success over the past twelve months on securing more partnerships and on increasing our exploration effort in a number of geographies, both in nickel and in copper. And then, of course, in addition to exploration early stage entry, we remain present to the possibility in future at the right for the right assets, the right point in the cycle to acquisitions as well, but very strong focus on exploration early stage entry and innovation.
Thanks, Mike. Maybe I'll take the next question here. So we'll talk a little bit about ESG. And then I've also had a question that's come in on the Veracast panel, so I'll see if I can work that one in. So we talk about ESG, the S, the social, always feels a little bit more nebulous than some of the other criteria.
So almost two years ago, you outlined your approach to social value. Can you just summarize what this is? And I guess the question from Veracast is, we look at what's happening in Chile, we look at what's happening in Peru. Again, how do you think about this in terms of the potential impact on your business? How do you manage this?
Okay. Well, look, great questions. And it's an interesting one, isn't it, Jason? Because you opened up with the S's is a bit more nebulous, which I kind of agree that it can be seen that way, and yet it's paradoxically the one that is most pervasive in everything that we do. And it's really that notion that every decision that we take, every action that we take has an impact on those around us.
And through the way that we go about our work, we can do a better or less good job of generating opportunity and creating value for others. And it's really this overarching concept that's led us to the shift from social license, which I think some people are you know, perhaps it brings a bit of a connotation with it of the minimum necessary to the concept of social value, which as I said, is really about understanding that every action that we take, the way the how do we go about our business, if we're thoughtful and deliberate about that, we can actually create more opportunity and more value for a wider range of stakeholders, all those who have a stake in in in BHP's success. Now in order to do that, we need to ensure that that concept permeates right throughout the organization, and everybody has it in their mind when they're executing their daily business. Now what you see playing out, and yes, it's kind of stark relief in Chile and Peru. But globally, this sense of people wanting a fair what they see as a fair share and having aspirations and there's a role for corporates in thinking about how we can go about prosecuting our business in a way that creates more opportunity for more stakeholders.
And so it's perfectly aligned with the notion of social value in the way that we've embedded it. Now there will be specific things we have to see how Chibi plays out, obviously. But we're still hopeful that that's going to proceed down a path where people understand the importance of maintaining stability and the importance of being able to attract capital because, of course, Chile has fantastic copper resources. But for the big ongoing investment into into the country, the fiscal settings have to be attractive. But that attraction needs to be seen in its broader sense, including in the way that companies contribute back into society through the jobs they create, through the contributions they make into communities, through the opportunities they provide for other businesses.
And again, that's something where we believe we do make a big contribution there, but there's more to do as is seen in our social value agenda.
Hi, Mike, James again. Can we please talk about Janssen? So potash is one of BHP's future facing commodities. Around about $5,000,000,000 of CapEx has been sunk to date at Jansen. You've mentioned that the project will be designed by the Board in the middle of this calendar year.
Can you please tell us what your thinking is around Jansen in terms of project going ahead this year, potential sell down to a JV partner? And I guess, how are thinking about the supply demand balance for potash in the mid to long term? Thank you.
Okay. Thanks, James. Look, I'll start by saying that thinking really hasn't changed. We if I talk about the commodity, how we see it, the project and then the decision, we continue to like potash. We think that the long term demand and supply fundamentals for potash as a commodity are attractive.
Potash demand will be driven by ongoing population growth, increase in living standards, even the stronger push to decarbonize and green the global economy, we believe it's going to be positive for potash. And then on the supply side the equation, notwithstanding the near term market dynamics, we do believe and that's a reasonably widely held view that new greenfield capacity is going to be required in the market towards the end of this decade, early next decade. And of course, Canada has the world's best resources of undeveloped or greenfields potash, and we have the most attractive of those assets with the Jansen project. So we like the commodity. In terms of the project itself then, the you know, I'll start by saying we don't like the amount of capital that we've invested in the project today without having a a, you know, a project and and first production.
But we are where we are. We're making sure that we've learned the lessons from that. But I now look at the project going forward. You know, I've spent time getting behind the project to make sure we understand it. We're finalizing some of the project study parameters.
We still have to secure the port option or the port and route to market. But we'll then be bringing all of that together with a decision to be made middle of this calendar year, so in coming months, as to whether or not we want to proceed with Janssen stage one. And that, of course, will be made against the very disciplined approach that we have to capital allocation. And we'll ensure if the project is to proceed, it needs to be able to demonstrate that it's got the right value and returns relative to the risk. Now you did also ask James, or you had in there the question around sell down to a JV partner.
And we've always said, you know, we're open to partnering, but the project doesn't need a partner to proceed. So the key things that need that are required for the park for the project is to get the project studies finalized, get the project or the port option sorted, and then we can make a call as to whether we carry it forward to the Board for a investment decision.
Thank you.
Okay. Thanks, Mike. So a bit of a portfolio question, and I have had a couple of questions come in on the Veracast system as well, asking about coal and oil and their place in the portfolio. But you have been exploring options to exit thermal coal both in Australia and eventually in Colombia. It looks like you may also consider exiting some of your lower quality coking coal assets.
But so far, you're not committing to wholesale exit of hydrocarbons. You're keeping the higher quality coking coal. You're also maintaining some presence in petroleum. So how do you think about the impact of these hydrocarbons in your stock market valuation? And then I guess beyond that, if we think about met coal as, let's say, a gradually declining market at some point, how do you run a business that's feeding into something that ultimately should be shrinking?
Okay. So interesting questions, Jason. Let me talk first about met coal because that kind of sets the scene for the decisions that we've taken around thermal coal and a certain sub segment of met coal, and I'll come back to the broader question around multiples and so on. In the case of, know, there clearly at some point, there's going to be a decarbonization of the steel industry. The world needs that to happen for the world to meet the to overcome the climate challenge, and to become net zero by 2050 or in due course.
But within that, there's easier to abate emissions harder to abate emissions. And the emissions from steelmaking or blast furnace steelmaking are fit into the harder to abate category. So there's lots of effort underway to develop technologies to enable, the decarbonization of steel, But those technologies still many of them still aren't economic, they're still nascent in terms of their development curve. We're participating in some of them. The steel making partnerships that I mentioned earlier are focused on decarbonization of steel.
We've invested in some startups that are focused on even more leading edge technologies, but these things will take time to play out. And so for the foreseeable future, for decades hence, coking coal is still going to be needed for steelmaking. However, the steelmakers have the challenge of reducing their emissions footprint. We believe that they'll be taking some action, be it hydrogen injection into the blast furnace or simply improving blast furnace utilization to reduce emissions intensity, we believe that they'll be prioritizing those sorts of activities in the near term. Against that backdrop then, the higher quality hard coking coals that enable higher blast furnace utilization, for example, we believe we're going to remain in strong demand and are likely to attract an even greater premium relative to lower quality, coals.
And so that means that in the BHP portfolio, where we've got, you know, thermal coal, less high quality hard coking coal, the premium hard coking coals, that part of the portfolio that will attract ongoing capital investment will be the high quality, the premium coking coals. Therefore, we won't unlock the true value of the other assets within the BHP portfolio, and that's what sat behind our decision to divest New South Wales Energy Coal, our stake in Sarah Hawn and BMC that we announced last year. Now recognizing the nature of the process that needs to play out, we spoke about two years to complete that, and so we're still in that process. Now if I come back then to the question around how do we think about impact on multiples and so on. Look, at at the end of the day, our first focus must be on intrinsic value.
How do we unlock best value for shareholders and and and and high returns? And we can't make all of our decisions based upon latest investor views or sentiment, albeit we can't ignore it either. So it's clearly a factor that we take into account even as we make the first focus intrinsic value. Now we will make whatever decision we believe is going to give rise the greatest value for shareholders for any commodity in portfolio. Hence, we constantly review the portfolio and what the best way of generating value for shareholders is.
Okay. Thanks very much for that, Mike. Well, look, I'm wary here of going over time. So I think we might need to round it up there. And as ever, I think we could chat all day, but some really interesting discussion points there.
Thank you very much for your time spent with us today. Thanks very much for presenting to us and being so patient with all these questions. Right. Hope to see you in person next year, Mike. Yeah.
Thanks everybody. And we're going to wrap up the BHP session now. We'll see you in ten minutes for Rio Tinto. Okay? Thanks very much.
Thank you. Bye bye. Bye.