BHPB stays silent on Norilsk coking coal 'j-v.'

摘要

Two big surprises emerged from Norilsk Nickel a couple of weeks ago. The first was that it was to start mining 8mt/yr of coking coal at its Sarydasai deposits near Norilsk in 2015, building up to 15mt/yr. Almost as attention-grabbing was that it said it was to do this in a joint venture with BHP Billiton. So unlikely did the story seem that we decided we would check with BHPB whether it had any veracity. So big would any link up with Norilsk be that it would warrant a stock exchange announcement, we surmised, as would BHPB's first Russian coking coal venture.