BHP sees strong interest for SA coal rights, to sell by June

BHP Billiton aims to wrap up the sale of the South African coal prospecting rights it put out to tender by the end of June, it said on Tuesday.

“We’ve received a lot of interest,” BHP Billiton South Africa chairperson Xolani Mkhwanazi told Mining Weekly Online.

“We will meet the prequalified people around March 18 then give them a few weeks to get definitive proposals and deeds and we think before the end of June we should have finalised everything,” he said, speaking on the sidelines of the MineAfrica mining breakfast in Toronto.

BHP Billiton announced in January that it would put certain of its South African coal prospecting licences out to tender.

“There is a ‘use it or lose it’ policy, so we did an analysis and looked at what we would be able to develop in the given timeframe. Those that we could not we thought we should give an opportunity to empowered companies to exploit,” said Mkhwanazi.

He said BHP Billiton had received interest from black-owned and black-empowered companies, adding that the firm had also advertised the prospecting rights in China and India, which have voracious appetites for coal.

India, in particular, has already invested aggressively in South Africa’s coal sector over the past two years.

Mkhwanazi said that Resources Financial Advisory Services, BHP Billiton Energy Coal South Africa’s adviser on the sales, would provide detailed feedback around March 18.

Mkhwanazi was attending the seminar, held alongside the 2011 Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada conference, in his other role as the Chamber of Mines president.(miningweekly)