BHP Billiton boss Marius Kloppers says his company will continue to invest in deep-water drilling despite BP's disastrous Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
BHP ceased drilling additional production wells at its Atlantis and Shenzi oil fields in the Gulf after the April explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon that led to nearly 5 million barrels of oil (boe) gushing out of BP's well over 86 days, costing the company billions of dollars and damaging its reputation.
Despite a halt on production for those wells during the June quarter, and the company's prediction that it could have a ''big impact to our near-term story'', BHP managed to produce 159 million barrels of oil equivalent across its petroleum division in 2009-10, just shy of its 160 million boe forecast before the spill and up 16 per cent on the 137.2 million boe recorded the year before.
Mr Kloppers shrugged off questions about BHP's exposure to deepwater drilling, saying it planned to continue its drilling program.
''We obviously, like most petroleum companies in the world, have taken a very, very close look in the first instance at the very rigorous procedures that we have put in place are in fact complete and in place,'' he said.
''We feel very comfortable that we have done everything that we can in that regard. There is no real change in our long-standing ambition of having higher percentages of the ventures that we drill …
''As we see the results of our development and exploration program unfolding over the next couple of years, I think you are going to see a pattern emerge, which is consistent with that.''
MATHEW MURPHY