A BHP Billiton executive told Australian media that the company is looking to divest mining JVs that it or its partners have no operational control over, including Brazil’s co-owned pellets producer Samarco.
A media report said the move could cost BHP as much as $22.5 billion worth of Latin American mining assets reshuffled.
The company’s reputation was damaged by the Mariana disaster that hit Samarco’s operations in the state of Minas Gerais, in Brazil, as an iron ore waste dam burst, killing 19 people and destroying much of the life at the Doce river.
BHP Billiton chief executive, Andrew Mackenzie, said it could not be known if the November tragedy would have been avoided with a different operator.
According to the executive, it is a historical anomaly BHP would like removed, both at Samarco and its other non-operated mining joint ventures.
Australian media noted BHP’s motives for the simplification of its exposure to non-JVs is way deeper than having a potentially cheap increase in its ownership of an asset.
“It’s more urgent or made to be more urgent in the case of Samarco because we would like to have some clarity, particularly if we restart it,’’ he said.
“Because of the way in which we’ve suffered as a company with Vale, there’s a willingness to engage there. That makes it easier to make progress than perhaps in some of the others. But (we are) engaging with the others, for sure we are,’’ the executive added.
Mackenzie admitted “somebody has to, to some extent, sell down at a discount so somebody else can become the operator, or somebody has to buy up at a premium so they become the operator.”