BHP looks to diversify commodities exposure

If BHP Billiton Petroleum were a standalone company, its $4.75bn （2.9bn） acquisition of a US shale gas field, announced on Tuesday, would have been transformational.

But it is just one unit of many in BHP, which is more widely known as a mining group. And although the petroleum business is large in its own right, it is dwarfed by the scale of the group’s mining activities.

that sum for an Arkansas gas asset owned by Chesapeake Energy demonstrates the group’s ambition to expand its oil and gas business. It is keen to diversify its commodity exposure further away from metals to areas such as uranium, gas and even potash.

An executive at the company last month said BHP “would not feel uncomfortable if the total energy proportion of the business is somewhat higher than one-third from time to time” in terms of earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation.