BHP Billiton’s Major Gold Expectations

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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BHP Billiton Ltd. (NYSE:BHP) is seeing shares up more than 5% in pre-market activity at $76.65 at what will be new 52-week highs for its ADR’s.  The word is out that the world mining giant is going to announce on Wednesday what may be the world’s largest gold resource at its Olympic Dam mine in southern Australia.  You can read the full story at the Herald Sun site where the news came out.

There are some interesting ongoing events that surround this location.  BHP has been reportedly been operating up to 20 drilling rigs at the mine to justify the major expansion of more than $6 billion expanding the mine.  This mine already sits atop the world’s largest uranium resource and is among the world’s largest copper and silver deposits.

As far as if this is the "Largest" is still not known.  In a world where gold is harder and harder to find and where supposedly most of the "known finds" close to the surface have been made, you have to wonder how much hype has been added in on this story by eager analysts and demanding goals. 

BHP Billiton hopefully won’t ever allow itself to get into Bre-X situation, and we don’t think this is anywhere in the same light at all.  This company is far too large and too reputable for that.  But when you hear about "the largest find in the world" it’s hard not being at least a little skeptical when you know how demanding the expectations are on the company.

Jon C. Ogg
September 24, 2007

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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