Future nickel discoveries on BHP's Western Australian tenements...

Future nickel discoveries on BHP's Western Australian tenements could be shared with an unlisted data analytics company after BHP hired it to use artificial intelligence to make suggestions on where the mining giant should drill.BHP is expected to formalise its partnership with the company, SensOre, within days as part of efforts to unlock the full potential of the huge land package that sits within BHP's Nickel West business
BHP chief executive Mike Henry has named nickel as one of the "future facing" commodities that he wants more exposure to, and stressed this month that the huge footprint of BHP's existing operations meant the company did not necessarily need to look externally to find more nickel.''One of the elements of our strategy in both copper and nickel, frankly, will be to see if we can innovate our way through to creating more options,'' he told investors on September 10,The partnership with SensOre is designed to help BHP make new discoveries on old ground.
SensOre will use enormous amounts of data and artificial intelligence to suggest places to drill by combining geological data from neighbouring regions with the geological data for BHP's leases.SensOre chief executive Richard Taylor said much of the value lay in revisiting and reinterpreting geology that had previously been drilled only to shallow depths.''We are focused on targets that are deep under cover," he said. "There is no existing method to be able to do proper targeting for these commodities, but our data analysis will increase the fertility of their existing tenements by suggesting new targets
SensOre would receive a fee for the service, but Mr Taylor said the bulk of the opportunity for the unlisted company lay in guiding BHP toward new discoveries.''We get exposure to discovery," he said. "We provide them with the targets and will get payments linked to their success because we believe in the technology."Mr Henry said this month that Nickel West was a small business for BHP with a lot of potential given it mined the type of nickel geology that would be most suited to supplying the manufacturers of modern batteries.''Within the overall nickel industry, we think that nickel sulphides are going to be particularly advantaged," he said. "We have an an incumbent position in terms of both resource and infrastructure, so we'll be looking to leverage that base to grow.
''For the world to achieve the Paris-aligned outcomes, there is going to need to be a big push into batteries and electric vehicles and so on. We see growth in nickel demand as being quite strong over the coming decades.''
The wave of optimism toward nickel has convinced ASX-listed Mincor to push ahead with the revival of old mines that will rely on BHP's nickel concentrator in Kambalda for processing.ASX-listed Blackstone Minerals raised $17.8 million from institutional investors last week to progress its nickel project in Vietnam, and is in the process of raising a further $3 million from retail investors.If SensOre's work at Nickel West is successful, the partnership could be expanded to BHP's other commodity divisions, highlighting BHP's habit of trialling things at Nickel West before deployment across the entire business.BHP's first block cave mine is now operating within the Nickel West business, and the company will also trial the production of emissions-free hydrogen using solar power at Nickel West