It is reported that BHP Billiton Ltd's multi billion dollar expansion of the Olympic Dam mine in South Australia could be delayed at least two years due to the economic crisis.

Mr Warwick Grigor director of BGF Equities said that the downturn in global economic and commodity markets was likely to delay the Olympic Dam expansion. He said that "Olympic Dam is probably going to slip by at least two years in its timetable, if not longer.”

Mr Grigor suggested that BHP Billiton may be better off making acquisitions rather than expanding the mine in the current economic climate. He added that "We really don't know where the end of the tunnel is in terms of this economic crisis and it would be very brave of BHP to be throwing a lot of money at that when they can buy so many other bargain-basement assets around and extend their power that way.”

As per report BHPB was aiming to have the first stage of its five phase Olympic Dam expansion in production by 2013. This phase was to optimize the existing underground operation and increase production capacity to 200,000 tonnes of copper, 4,500 tonnes of uranium and 120,000 ounces of gold.

A BHP Billiton spokeswoman said that the company hadn't updated the timetable since the October presentation. She added that but activity at the project had been scaled back.

In January, BHP Billiton said it would scale back the project activity at Olympic Dam because of the downturn and while the company awaited government approvals for the environmental impact statement.

The approvals could take about 12 to 18 months to complete.

Olympic Dam is about 560 kilometres north of Adelaide and houses the world's largest known uranium resource and has a capacity to produce 180,000 tonnes of copper and 4,000 tonnes of uranium per year, with the staged expansion looking to increase copper and uranium output to 730,000 and 19,000 tonnes respectively.