BHP’s Seahorse nickel and copper expedition in Western Australia fails to reel in a big find

BHP’s trawl for copper and nickel across a landholding nearly 700 times the size of Rottnest Island has come up dry. By the end of next month BHP will formally relinquish a 13,000sqkm tract of exploration ground east of Kalgoorlie called Seahorse. “We are concluding our exploration activities at the Seahorse project as it does not meet our technical criteria for further investment in exploration,” a BHP spokesman said. The search at Seahorse received WA government funding under the Exploration Incentive Scheme. But a spokesman for the Department of Energy, Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety declined to reveal the amount handed over to BHP, citing commercial confidentiality. BHP pulling up stumps at Seahorse marks a further retreat, at least temporarily, from its shuttered WA nickel operation and cements South Australia’s supremacy as the company’s Australian hub for copper. Copper, unlike nickel, is currently highly coveted by the diversified mining giant. Seahorse is on the WA side of the Nullarbor Plain. The name results from the tenement package’s uncanny resemblance to a seahorse as it winds from north of the trans-Australian railway, down past Eyre Highway and towards the Great Australian Bight. Seahorse comprises 26 tenements linked together across an area not renowned for its mineral endowment. The greenfields exploration tenure was first waved in front of BHP investors in 2019 and touted as a potential expansion of Nickel West given its proximity to rail and major highway routes connected to the nickel processing infrastructure. Seahorse is about 450km by road to the vital Kalgoorlie nickel smelter and intersects the Trans-Australian Railway corridor. But it is also prospective for copper, according to a geological survey undertaken in 2020 by DEMIRS. Privately owned Tec Minerals has said it is hunting for copper and gold at its North East Fraser project “in close proximity” to Seahorse. ASX-listed Red Metal staked ground adjoining Seahorse to explore copper-gold and copper-nickel targets. BHP waving goodbye to Seahorse also sheds light on the mining goliath’s future nickel exploration strategy in WA. Earlier this month the Big Australian announced it was putting Nickel West into care and maintenance from October, and intends to make a decision on a nickel restart “no later” than February 2027. BHP said it would inject about $450 million annually into its WA nickel arm to enable a potential restart. This includes an investment into exploration to “extend the resource life of Western Australia Nickel and preserve optionality”. The West Australian understands this will be brownfields exploration in the surrounds of BHP’s existing Mt Keith, Leinster and Cliffs mining operations. To put Seahorse’s sprawling size into context, the land area of Rottnest Island is 19sqkm, approximately 685 times smaller than Seahorse.