BHP Billiton CEO Marius Kloppers had a lot of analysts scratching their heads after he revealed BHP Billiton planned to spend $US80 billion investing in its current portfolio over the next five years.
Even though Kloppers nominated, without specifics, the broad areas in which the $US80 billion would be spent, they were struggling to work out how BHP Billiton could spend that amount of money within that time period on the projects he identified – expansion of BHP Billiton’s Queensland coal mines, its Pilbara operations, its Escondida copper project in Chile, oil and gas, the first phase of the Olympic Dam expansion and the Jansen potash project in Canada.
The big new project in BHP Billiton’s near term plans is the $US12 billion or so Jansen potash project in Canada.
See http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/BHP-Billiton-potash-Marius-Kloppers-pd20110221-EA92U?opendocument&src=rss.