BHP announces strong Q3 met coal production

BHP Billiton’s Q3 metallurgical coal production jumped 25% compared to the same period last year to a record of 13 million t, the company said in its quarterly operations report. The company’s Duania and South Walker Creek mines in Queensland achieved record production, while the new Caval Ridge mine operated at capacity.

In New South Wales, BHP’s Illawara production also boomed – up by 64% to 2.3 million t, despite an extended outage at the Dendrobrium mine.

On the thermal side, hostile weather conditions in Colombia and Australia hit output, which was down 9% to just under 18 million t. At Cerrejon in the La Guajira region of Colombia, production was constrained by the need to limit dust emissions during an ongoing drought, while in New South Wales, adverse weather coupled with unplanned wash plant outages saw out drop by 12%.

In the US, Navajo Coal production also dropped after the closure of three of the five power units at the Four Corners power plant.

Coal production remains on track to meet the company’s two year growth target of 47 million tpa of metallurgical and 73 million tpa of thermal coal by June 2016.

Written by Jonathan Rowland.

Read the article online at: https://www.worldcoal.com/mining/22102014/world-coal-bhp-billiton-announces-strong-q3-2014-met-coal-production-coal1433/