"BHP Billiton, through FALCON®, is seeking alliances and joint ventures, and is particularly interested in ideas and proposals from potential partners. "
Posted on 04/03/2005 9:40:00 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
U.S. Blocks Use of Mapping System in China
By WAYNE ARNOLD
he Australian mining company BHP Billiton said Friday that the United States Defense Department was blocking it from using an advanced mapping technology to search for mineral deposits in China.
BHP Billiton has a license to use the so-called Falcon system, which was originally intended for use on United States nuclear submarines. BHP Billiton has been using the system around the world since 1999 to help find underground deposits of minerals from aluminum to zinc.
But in a meeting this week with analysts in Australia, the head of BHP Billiton's business in China, Clinton Dines, said plans to use Falcon technology in China had been rejected by the United States Navy, according to a report published in The Australian, which was confirmed Friday by BHP Billiton in Melbourne.
Under the terms of BHP Billiton's license to use Falcon, a spokeswoman for the company said, "They can dictate where we can and can't use it."
A Pentagon spokeswoman in Washington, Lt. Col. Tracy O'Grady-Walsh, said Friday that the Falcon system was on a list of American munitions banned from export to China without a presidential waiver. The ban results from sanctions imposed after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.
The disclosure that Washington is seeking to block the export of geological survey technology to China comes as the United States is seeking to prevent Europe from lifting an arms embargo against China - something Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany vowed anew on Thursday to do.
Whether or not the Falcon technology could be used by Beijing for military purposes, its commercial potential for the country is clear. China is in the midst of an aggressive drive to secure raw materials for its fast-growing economy, including copper, iron ore and oil, risking territorial disputes with Japan and other neighbors in its quest.
China's hunger for raw materials has also made it increasingly important to BHP Billiton. Sales to China account for 10 percent of BHP Billiton's total revenue.
The Falcon technology was designed by Lockheed Martin as a navigation system for United States submarines to avoid undersea mountains. In the late 1980's, it was adapted for use by aircraft and used by the United States Air Force, reportedly to search for nuclear warheads.
In the early 1990's, this system, called an airborne gravity gradiometer, was identified by BHP, which merged with the British company Billiton in 2001, as having potential uses for mining. By 1999, it had secured an exclusive license to use the system for exploration. The license for oil and gas exploration expires in October 2009, while a separate license for mineral exploration lapses in April 2010.
When the company introduced the system in 2000, one BHP Billiton executive called Falcon "the holy grail of the exploration industry," enabling it to survey previously inaccessible areas.
The system, which weighing about 1,000 pounds, is loaded onto light aircraft and flown over prospective mining areas. It produces colored maps indicating changes in the earth's density that can give geologists clues to the whereabouts of valuable ore bodies.
BHP Billiton has used Falcon around Australia and Canada, as well as in South America and Africa. It also conducts survey flights for other companies around the world.
"It's very good at finding diamond pipes," said Neil Goodwill, an analyst at Goldman Sachs JBWere in Melbourne.
BHP Billiton has said Falcon helped it find potential diamond deposits at its Ekati mine in Canada, which produces roughly 4 percent of the world's diamond supply.
BHP Billiton declined to say what it had intended to search for in China using Falcon. Analysts said most of China had been mined so extensively over the centuries that it was hard to imagine that any significant deposits could have been overlooked.
Where Falcon may be useful, they said, was in the remote areas of western China, or in shallow coastal waters in the search for natural gas. Beijing is also eagerly searching for more efficient ways to exploit domestic coal deposits.
"They're moving first into oil, and then they're trying to go into gas as quickly as they can," said Bob Broadfoot, managing director of the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy in Hong Kong, who counts BHP Billiton as a client. "But ultimately they don't want to be dependent on this imported fuel, period."
Ping!
At least our technology is not being sold for campaign dollars to the highest Commie Chinese bidder, as during the Clinton administration....
bump
"U.S. Navy chokes China."
I will keep my eyes openend for a Presidential waiver.
It basically sounds like Billiton is so stupid (or greedy) they can't make the logical connection between chinese immigration officials "detaining" equipment long enough to duplicate or outsource them, then send that technology back in a few years in the nose of a ballistic missle. When companies think about the "bottom line" only to the exclusion of all else, they act exactly like the tired homily about men and their sex drives, short term satisfaction at the expense of long term consequences. Shame on you BHP Billiton. I thought mining engineers had more sense.
Just wait till the next Clinton administration.
Unless he is short on cash.:-)
Calling Bill Clinton...
"BHP Billiton, through FALCON®, is seeking alliances and joint ventures, and is particularly interested in ideas and proposals from potential partners. "
they look like components of a furnace.:)
Why is it when I read the sentence "The Falcon technology was designed by Lockheed Martin as a navigation system for United States submarines to avoid undersea mountains" I think of that submarine, was it the SSN San Francisco?
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