Olympic Dam
Mine · Australia
Watch and Edit are coming soon.
Olympic Dam is a mine in Australia on record for copper.
160 kt
Latest recorded output: Copper cathode, contained in mine output, 2019
STALE 2022
Type and status
Mine
Status as listed: active
Latest recorded production
160 kt
Copper cathode, contained in mine output, 2019
Water stress of the sub-basin
Arid and Low Water Use
Modelled baseline of the place, 2023
Overview
Company profiles for names printed here: BHP Group (matched by exact name, or through a subsidiary GLEIF lists; not verified ownership)
Map
- Olympic Dam: Mine
- Australia
The ring marks the coordinates the source gives.
Key facts
- Type
- Mine (listed as: Mine, Refinery, Smelter)
- Country
- Australia (AUS)
- Location (lat, lon)
- -30.4464, 136.8701
- Commodities and products, as listed
- Copper, Coper Anodes, Copper cathodes, Uranium oxide, Gold, Silver
- Status, as listed
- active
- Operator, as listed
- BHP (as of 2019)
- Owner, as listed
- BHP (100%) (as of 2019)
Also listed by another source as: Olympic Dam (Geoscience Australia operating mines 2025)
Supply chain
Where this site sits in the chain: what the record lists, and what else is on record nearby.
Materials on record
- Kind of site
- Mine
- Commodities and products, as listed
- Copper, Coper Anodes, Copper cathodes, Uranium oxide, Gold, Silver
In Australia
The atlas has 417 sites on record in Australia.
Country profile: AustraliaCompare with another site
Sites come from a USGS compilation for Latin America and the Caribbean that describes 2014, the national surveys of Australia (plants, mines, critical-mineral deposits), Canada (mines, smelters, refineries, critical-mineral projects) and Sweden (mines in operation and significant prospects), a 2022 database of coal and metal mines, and mine areas mapped by OpenStreetMap volunteers (marked as estimated). A deposit or a project is not a mine and is never counted as one. Processing plants in Asia, Africa and Europe are mostly missing. A missing facility means it is not in these sources, not that it does not exist.
Money
Capacity and yearly production as the sources record them. The atlas has no revenue, cost or value figure for a single site.
Production by year
Tonnes, as the database took them from company and agency reports. Years without a reported figure are left out, not filled in.
Copper cathode · contained in mine output 2006–2019, 14 years
| Year | Tonnes | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 160 300Reporting period: July-June | |
| 2018 | 136 700Reporting period: July-June | |
| 2017 | 166 300Reporting period: July-June | |
| 2016 | 202 800Reporting period: July-June | |
| 2015 | 124 500Reporting period: July-June. Total copper cathode produced(ER+EW): 115+9.5 | |
| 2014 | 184 400Reporting period: July-June. Total copper cathode produced(ER+EW): 173.2+11.2 | |
| 2013 | 166 200Reporting period: July-June. Total copper cathode produced(ER+EW): 154.2+12 | |
| 2012 | 192 600Reporting period: July-June. Total copper cathode produced(ER+EW): 180.3+12.3 | |
| 2011 | 194 100Reporting period: July-June. Total copper cathode produced(ER+EW): 181.4+12.7 | |
| 2010 | 103 300Reporting period: July-June. Total copper cathode produced(ER+EW): 96.3+7 | |
| 2009 | 194 100Reporting period: July-June. Total copper cathode produced(ER+EW): 181.8+12.3 | BHP Billiton (2009) Quarterly Production Report - June 2009 ; Estimate (value) ; Estimate (grade) ↗ |
| 2008 | 169 900Reporting period: July-June. Total copper cathode produced(ER+EW): 156.8+13.1 | BHP Billiton (2009) Quarterly Production Report - June 2009 ; Estimate (value) ; Estimate (grade) ↗ |
| 2007 | 182 500Reporting period: July-June. Total copper cathode produced(ER+EW): 168.1+14.4 | BHP Billiton (2007) Quarterly Production Report - June 2007 ; Estimate (value) ; Estimate (grade) ↗ |
| 2006 | 204 300Reporting period: July-June. Total copper cathode produced(ER+EW): 186.4+17.9 | BHP Billiton (2007) Quarterly Production Report - June 2007 ; Estimate (value) ; Estimate (grade) ↗ |
These figures are informational, not financial advice.
Sustainability
Four indicators, the same on every profile. For a single site most of them are properties of the place or the country, and are labelled so.
Carbon
Emissions intensity of the electricity grid of Australia: the country's grid, not this site's.
518gCO2e/kWh
Higher than 59% of the other 208 countries with a grid figure.
- The atlas has no record of this site's own power supply or emissions.
Water
Baseline water stress of the sub-basin the site lies in.
Arid and Low Water Use
This is a class, not a figure, so no percentile is given.
- A modelled property of the place, not a measure of the site's own water use.
- "Arid and Low Water Use" is a class of its own in the source and is not counted as high.
Land
Land visibly used by mining.
Not available per site: the atlas holds the mapped area per country only.
- Mapped from satellite images for all mining in a country. It cannot be attributed to one material or one site.
Circularity
Recycling's share of demand.
Not available per site: the atlas has no recycling figure for single sites.
There is no overall score: the four figures measure different things and are not added up. How to read these figures
Risks & policy
Export controls in force
Compiled by USGS, effective January 2026. Not a live feed.
USGS Table 4 lists no export control by Australia for the materials of this site.
Chokepoints at sea
The atlas has no record of which minerals pass through which sea passage, so no chokepoint figure is attached to this profile. Current ship counts for the main passages are on the Live page. Open the Live page
What the atlas does not know about sites
Sites come from a USGS compilation for Latin America and the Caribbean that describes 2014, the national surveys of Australia (plants, mines, critical-mineral deposits), Canada (mines, smelters, refineries, critical-mineral projects) and Sweden (mines in operation and significant prospects), a 2022 database of coal and metal mines, and mine areas mapped by OpenStreetMap volunteers (marked as estimated). A deposit or a project is not a mine and is never counted as one. Processing plants in Asia, Africa and Europe are mostly missing. A missing facility means it is not in these sources, not that it does not exist.
Sources
Every source this profile uses, with its licence, the years its figures describe and how sure the figures are. Each chip on the profile opens the single record.
- WU Vienna mine database v1.0.3 ↗15 records used
- Licence
- CC-BY-4.0
- As of
- 2006–2022
- Confidence
- Reported
- Ember Yearly Electricity Data ↗1 record used
- Licence
- CC-BY-4.0
- As of
- 2025
- Confidence
- Reported
- WRI Aqueduct 4.0 ↗1 record used
- Licence
- CC-BY-4.0
- As of
- 2023
- Confidence
- Estimated
{n} record used
This record comes from
The database took it from: BHP Annual Report 2019, BHP Website (Olympic Dam) ↗
History & talk
Revision history and discussion are coming soon.
Every change to a figure will be listed here with its source, its credit and its review, and each profile will have a place to discuss it. Until then the data changes only when a source is updated, and every figure links to that source.
What we don't know yet
No open source we may use gives these figures. Nothing is estimated to fill them. If you know a public source, add it.
- Largest recorded capacity: No capacity recorded.Add data: Largest recorded capacity: No capacity recorded.