The recent uptick in mining mergers and acquisitions (M&A) is masking the slowdown in greenfield exploration projects. Companies are increasingly relying on acquisitions rather than the expensive and risky process of discovering new deposits.
After making a new all-time high in May, copper has declined and stepped down from the headlines, leaving gold in the top spot. Despite copper's price decline, its looming shortages continue to trouble analysts, who project significant discrepancies between supply and demand in coming years.
BHP Group Ltd.’s (NYSE:BHP) Oak Dam project in Australia, discovered in 2018, presents one of the few large-scale greenfield copper prospects in development today. The exploration target is an estimated 500 million to 1.7 billion tons of ore with a copper grade of 0.8-1.1%, an exceptionally promising find.
Globally, there would be few companies conducting drilling campaigns of this scale, to this depth," BHP's leading geologist Michael Fonti said for Bloomberg.
Buy, Don't Build
Yet, despite Oak Dam's promise, even BHP, the world’s largest mining company, focuses more on acquisitions than new developments.
The company bought OZ Minerals for $6.4 billion while failing to complete a $49 billion acquisition of Anglo American, which owns significant copper assets in South America.
Still, BHP expanded its foothold on ...
