A copper M&A frenzy masks big miners’ hesitation to build

From Mining.com

“Globally, there would be few companies conducting drilling campaigns of this scale, to this depth,” said Michael Fonti, BHP’s main exploration geologist at the site, pointing out a diagram of the cone-shaped deposit.

Fonti has spent more than two decades on sites much like this one, working most recently at the miner’s nearby Olympic Dam, a vast, challenging copper and uranium operation. But even for BHP — a $140 billion company which generated almost $12 billion in free cash flow in the last financial year — large, greenfield projects are scarce, and becoming more so. Deals, not discoveries, are grabbing the headlines.