Iron ore project review 2015

The past year has seen 18 projects representing US$29 billion of possible investment and 204Mtpa of capacity shelved as the sharp fall and bleak outlook for iron ore prices takes its toll. Developing projects over the medium term will be difficult. We expect production from existing mines and highly probable projects will be sufficient to meet demand through to 2025, but we have still identified more than 500Mtpa of proposed projects that we classify as probable or possible. Faced with an oversupplied market, we expect many of these projects will eventually be cancelled. Our current project pipeline covers 52 projects with a combined capacity 799Mtpa and capital expenditure of US$85 billion. Two-thirds of proposed projects - and almost all projects in our base case classified as highly probable - are located in Australia and Brazil, meaning the two dominant countries supplying the seaborne market are likely to further increase their market share.