BHP's US Boss Sees Oil and Gas as Miner's Future

BHP chief executive Marius Kloppers. Source: The Australian

THE brutal scale and breadth of BHP Billiton's capital program in the next half decade means Marius Kloppers' tenure probably rests on more than the immediate future of $20 billion US shale gas and oil play.   

But the same cannot be said for Kloppers' Houston oil boss, J. Michael Yeager.

The Exxon-trained, former marine has patently staked his reputation on the potential of the rapidly evolving and sometimes controversial unconventional oil and gas sector to sustain a thoroughly new era of growth for a business founded on Bass Strait oil, sustained by the North West Shelf LNG and that more recently has found enriching succor in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Yeager introduced BHP to the shale game with the acquisition in February of $US4.75bn ($4.63bn) worth of resource and infrastructure from Chesapeake Energy Corporation, after which BHP better than tripled its bet in July with the $US15.1bn takeover of PetroHawk Energy.

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The Australian