BHP Billiton Group ranks as the ninth most profitable company in the world, just below BP and just above Microsoft, according to Forbes. And BHP Billiton Petroleum was responsible for 32% of those earnings in the group’s most recent earnings results.

But other than its US $20 billion of US shale acquisitions in 2011, the petroleum company has kept a relatively low profile. It quietly entered the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) in the 1990s and now has four major deepwater platforms there, including Shenzi and Neptune, which it built and operates. It made its first foray into shales when it purchased Chesapeake’s Fayetteville assets early in 2011 before buying Petrohawk later that year.

Now that low profile may be a thing of the past. BHP Billiton Petroleum is growing quickly and is not shy about sharing its success with the world. E&P recently visited with CEO J. Michael Yeager to find out what’s fueling the company’s ramp-up.

BHP seems to be in the news quite a bit these days. What has been the motivation behind these ambitious plans?

We have always had a fairly decent representation internationally and have had a long history in Western Australia that dates back to the 1960s. We got involved with some acreage in the GoM in the 1990s and ended up with some discoveries in the early part of this decade. I joined the company in 2006 when there were about 300 of us here in this building, and the board of directors said, “Let’s see what we can do with this BHP Billiton Petroleum thing.”

We made about 300,000 b/d back then, and now we produce about 650,000 b/d. It has been a good seven-year run.

Our growth, primarily early on, was in the GoM and Western Australia. We have now built two of the four deepest platforms in the GoM, and we are probably the third or fourth largest producer out there. We have a dominant share in Western Australia and have continued to drill development wells, plus we have two of the largest FPSO vessels in Western Australia – Pyrenees and Stybarrow.

We started studying shale back in 2010 because we try to be in the plays that are big and long-lived. That led us to analyze this opportunity. So we did that, got comfortable with it, and picked out some assets that we thought would be desirable, and that is what led us to Petrohawk – the liquids. We are now the largest operator in the Eagle Ford – with 30-some rigs down there – and have gone from about 12,000 b/d to around 110,000, b/d, and we can get to 300,000 b/d.

You said that the board of directors stepped in and gave you some guidance. What was their rationale?

There were two things on their minds. Number one, we had this petroleum company, and we either needed to make it better or get rid of it. But the board also was aware that we were part of a giant corporation, and the oil and gas piece was unique in that it had no anti-trust problems. We have such dominant shares of iron ore and coal and copper that when we want to go out and do things commercially, we are already kind of the Exxon-Mobil of those things. That gives the oil and gas piece a little bit more uniqueness in that portfolio, and they wanted to take advantage of that.

Regarding the Petrohawk acquisition, you could have just acquired acreage, but you acquired a company instead. Was that because they already had the skill set you needed?

That is a great point. Many companies join the shale plays in a nonoperating manner; they buy a joint interest position in a passive way. Quite honestly, we did not want to do that. We wanted to start drilling and fracing these wells ourselves and build the organizational capacity it takes to do that. We had already done our homework knowing that this is going to be a 30- to 50-year commitment, so we might as well move forward.

The Petrohawk guys have been extremely wonderful colleagues. We now operate three times the rigs that were operating in the Petrohawk days, so that is the kind of capital we can bring to it.

Onshore, what has it been like for someone new to the shales? Are you looking to further expand your acreage in these plays?

The onshore business is a real game-changer for any company that gets into it. Prior to getting involved in the shale plays, we had about 80 drilling engineers. Now we have 560 drilling engineers and supervisors. So the onshore business is a big change in how our organization is structured. We have that in a separate division with different metrics, different technologies, different work processes, and different overall approaches in how things need to be done.

It is a significant change because it is so manpower-intensive. Our land department was about 40 people, and now it is 340 people. The supply organization to buy all of that equipment is now hundreds and hundreds of employees.

Tell me about your plans for Southeast Asia.

We have acreage in Asia right now that extends along a geologic trend from the Philippines to Malaysia to Brunei, and we have been looking at this for about five years. We have drilled two wells so far, one of which was dry and one of which found subeconomic hydrocarbons. But we know we are in an oily part of the world, and this position is just outboard of things that are closer to shore that are good discoveries.

What about South Africa?

In South Africa we are looking at the very prolific success that has been had in the deeper horizons, both off of South America and off the western coast of Africa. We have had this acreage for some time. We are just now running the seismic and hope to finish that up in July. It is about 10,000 sq km [3,861 sq miles], so it is a very large shoot and will cost almost $100 million before we are done. Luckily it is in a good place where other companies are calling us and wanting to partner with us, and that is always a good sign. It will probably be a year or so before we drill out there.

You are building a new headquarters in the Galleria area in Houston?

The building we are in is not something that we want to scoff at. We only had 300 people here in 2006, and now we have 1,800, so that reflects the growth that we have been through. We have hired hundreds of new employees yearly during that time. We secured this building and love this part of town. We are, today, in five different buildings, so as a result of our acquisitions and the growth of our business internationally, we think we will grow that up to around 3,000 employees over the next three to five years. Being in this tower and the one next door to it will enable much higher productivity than being scattered around in five buildings. The teams today require so much time together and so much collaboration, so the new building will leverage our ability to work and communicate with each other on a more regular basis. And the investment in that building is not much different than the rent we are paying in those other four right now, so it is not a big capital output for us. It is really just consolidating, but we are doing it so that these two buildings will be connected. We will have a two-building campus where people can go back and forth and work collaboratively in these two different towers as we see fit.

You talked about the need to hire a lot of additional personnel. How do you plan to recruit and find these people?

That has been a full-court press for us, and it is certainly something that is not to be understated. It is a very hot market right now. Everybody needs these people, and we are no different. We are now stretching our avenues through our media and external affairs team in ways we never thought possible. We are eager to get our story out there, and we are at all the main technical events so that people know who we are.

We have some events in certain parts of our operating territory, the most recent one down through South Texas. We want to be sure that we are able to speak directly to the men and women who might be looking for a long-term career with a company that is going to try to do some fairly decent things. And we hope that we will have some good luck with finding people there.

When you go someplace like South Texas, are you finding people who have the skills you actually need?

There is no doubt that the industry is stretched. And there is no doubt that we have to be concerned about that. But the way we have built our company is that the type of individuals we want in our South Texas operations are people who have backgrounds in the industry, and we are willing to train them and teach them beyond that. So yes, I think most of our operating teams are able to find the talent there. But, as you can imagine, what we really have to be concerned about is not just finding the talent but having a long-term story that people can depend upon. We really want to try to approach people who are not just looking for a job but for a career. That is the kind of company we are, and that is the kind of success we hope we will have as we go to those people who really want to be connected to somebody for a long time.

We are very cognizant of the fact that, particularly in the US onshore, we derive our ability to do this by virtue of our performance and by virtue of us being good citizens. We have some operating principles that we have published around how we are handling North America, and they include things like a public commitment to be the safest company in the industry and to handle things in an environmental way that goes beyond the law. So we do recognize that this piece is uniquely community-oriented, and we want to be uniquely community-supportive.