Research archive for BIL

This crossed my desk yesterday, it is a blog written by a real life Australian. The Implications of Australia's Tax Grab on BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto. The first few lines are telling Unfortunately I am Australian, I never thought I would utter those words, as being Australian has always invoked a feeling of being "lucky": Lucky we are a democracy, lucky we have a thriving economy, lucky we have a stable banking industry, lucky we have a strong dollar, lucky we "had" a large resource and mining industry. Read on and see why he is so upset at the prospect of being too taxed.

Let us get back to the reasons dogging BHP Billiton. Because it is important to almost all of our account holders. The first and most obvious reason is the Aussie super resource tax looming. Not a done deal by any stretch. And I suddenly found myself trying to understand the politics of Australia. What I can tell is that labour have wrestled the baton away from the liberals over the last decade and a half. The Aussie Senate seems like having the most delicate of balances right now, check out the Wiki page.

The BHP Billiton corrupt behaviour is taking on uglier proportions. Mining.com News Australia reports the following: THE investigation into BHP Billiton's potentially corrupt behaviour in Cambodia yesterday widened to include British regulators as BHP revealed it had handed over correspondence between its managers and government officials in negotiations involving. Sis. Turns out that no matter where you are nowadays, the authorities will find you. Excellent. Do you think that any sort of incentive to land certain contracts or mining rights that of course could lead to poor and unethical behaviour. Hey, we have that all around us, the whole world needs a moral overhaul in my opinion.

The headlines are reading BHP Billiton beats production records. This is true. You can download the nine month and third quarter production report here, titled BHP BILLITON PRODUCTION REPORT FOR THE NINE MONTHS ENDED 31 MARCH 2010. Keeping it original down under. OK, some problems for copper and uranium production in Chile and Australia specifically, but some of the other main segments, iron ore, petroleum, nickel, alumina and zinc all reached record production financial year to date. The Petroleum division shunted out 116.41 million barrels of oil equivalent for nine months, 36.84 million barrels for the quarter. That is 17 percent ahead of where they were last March after nine months. YTD in other words.

BHP Billiton finally moving on iron ore pricing. Finally, in my opinion, for what it is worth. The biggest mining company in the world will move a large portion of their customers to shorter term contracts. The WSJ piece: BHP Moves to Short-Term Ore Contracts spells it out pretty well. Again, this is probably a consequence of the Chinese authorities whole involvement in the bribery scandal that rocked Rio Tinto. Leading of course to the sentencing of four Rio employees yesterday.