Resources behemoth BHP Billiton said it achieved annual production records across ten of its operations in the year to the end of June.
Iron ore production in the final quarter of its financial year was up 15% from a year earlier to 40.89m tonnes, capping a year in which the group racked up its twelfth consecutive annual production record in iron ore.
Western Australia Iron Ore production in the current financial year is expected to be up 5% on the fiscal year just finished.
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On the base metals side, copper production in the fourth quarter was up 15% year-on-year, lead production rose 9% and silver output improved by 17% but zinc production was down 11% from the final quarter of fiscal 2010/11.
Copper production at the group's Escondida project in Chile is forecast to increase by around one-fifth in the current financial year. Successful completion of both the Escondida Ore Access and Laguna Seca bottleneck removal projects will facilitate a rise in Escondida copper production to over 1.3m tonnes in the 2014/15 financial year, the group said.
The group said that as a result of an adjustment to copper prices achieved, as opposed to projected, earnings before interest and tax will be revised down by $265m in the 2011/12 financial year; in the previous year, the group made $650m gain from similar adjustments.
Production of metallurgical coal in the April to June quarter was up 2% on the corresponding quarter of 2011 to 8.11m tonnes, despite industrial action hitting production at its Queensland operations in Australia.
In the same quarter, production of energy coal rose 1% year-on-year to 18.48m tonnes, with production records achieved at two of its export orientated operations, Cerrejon Coal in Colombia and New South Wales Energy Coal in Australia.
Though primarily a mining company, BHP Billiton also has oil and gas interests. In the April to June quarter production of crude oil, condensate and natural gas liquids eased 8% from a year earlier to 10.48m barrels of oil equivalent (boe). Weather related downtime in the Gulf of Mexico contributed to lower production in the period, in top of which the group's Mad Dog project in the USA was offline for the whole of the financial year while in the April-June quarter the Atlantis project in the USA was also closed for a long period for maintenance. Both Mad Dog and Atlantis are scheduled to be online in the July-September quarter.
Natural gas production in the quarter jumped 68% from a year earlier to 822.3bn cubic feet.
Total petroleum products output in the quarter was up 30% year-on-year to 222.34m boe.
JH
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