BHP also Eyes Canada's Uranium

BHP Billiton, the world's biggest miner, is interested in Canada's rich uranium reserves as well as trying to take over Canadian fertilizer producer
Potash, a newspaper reported on Tuesday.

The Western province of Saskatchewan is home base to Potash and contains some of the world's biggest uranium mines as well as huge deposits of potash, a key crop nutrient.

"There has been a fair amount of internal thinking about the uranium potential here," the Saskatoon StarPhoenix quoted BHP Chief Executive Marius Kloppers as saying in a story published on Tuesday. "I would say that those two commodities (potash and uranium), probably in order, are the ones that interest us."

BHP Billiton, whose $39 billion takeover offer has been rejected by Potash, is already involved in the uranium industry through its base-metals division. Saskatchewan's uranium industry is dominated by locally based Cameco and France's Areva.

"Saskatchewan is probably blessed with two (world-class resources), and they are what you have in potash and what you have in uranium, which really are world champion resources," Andrew Mackenzie, BHP's chief executive of nonferrous metals, said in the same newspaper article. "That would be where our interest would lie."

The newspaper said that Mackenzie stressed the company's uranium focus remains on its own properties, such as its Olympic Dam mine and the Yeerlirrie project, both of which are in Australia.

Mackenzie said BHP's top priority remains its pursuit of Potash.