Herald Sun: BHP lines up uranium customer [15jun06]

BHP Billiton aims to supply uranium to Russia in the next few years, the company's chief executive said.Chip Goodyear said Rosatom, Russia's atomic energy agency, would be a potential customer after BHP Billiton increased mining at its Olympic Dam project in Australia.
He said Olympic Dam held 34 per cent of the world's known uranium resources.
"What Gazprom is to natural gas, we are to uranium," Mr Goodyear said late on Tuesday after meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin and international business leaders.
Russia's state-controlled gas monopoly, Gazprom, is the world's largest gas producer.
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Canada's Cameco Corp is the world's biggest uranium producer. Uranium prices have quadrupled since late 2003 as high oil prices and attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions revitalise the nuclear fuel industry.
"As Russia's uranium and nuclear business and capacity continues to grow in the years ahead, they are going to need . . . uranium supply," Mr Goodyear said.
"We are about to go through a big expansion at Olympic Dam and make a decision to triple uranium production, so we need to find markets. Rosatom is a potential customer."
Mr Goodyear said Olympic Dam was 10 times larger than the next-biggest known uranium discovery.
Production costs were low because the uranium was mined as a by-product of copper and gold production at Olympic Dam.
Mr Goodyear said nuclear energy would account for a significant part of the growth in world energy consumption, particularly as countries try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
BHP Billiton also said on Tuesday it was teaming up with Norilsk Nickel, the world's largest nickel and palladium miner, to explore for minerals in northwestern Russia and western Siberia. – REUTERS