The company's chief executive, Andrew Mackenzie, made the comments on a day when the miner's new chairman Ken MacKenzie said it was "imperative" that the company have the trust of the communities and nations it operated in, backed the science of climate change, ruled out changes to BHP's dividend policy and said BHP was "deeply sorry" over the "terrible tragedy" when a dam collapsed at a joint venture operation in Brazil in 2015 that led to the death of 19 people.

BHP also reiterated its commitment to sell its onshore US shale assets, with Mr Mackenzie telling a media conference there was "strong" interest in them, interest that had firmed since BHP indicated it wanted to sell.

Mr Mackenzie suggested the shale assets were of interest to "multinational oil companies, private equity houses, to smaller concerns. And we're definitely packaging the business in a way that we can make it attractive to that spectrum, so we get a very strong bidding process."

During a marathon three-hour Australian annual meeting in Melbourne, the company faced a series of questions about its response to the Samarco disaster, and further criticism of its membership of the Minerals Council of Australia, with one person telling the meeting that its membership of the body drew it into "unnecessary public controversies".

In a shareholder information session before the AGM Mr Mackenzie said BHP had "an abundance of riches", including iron ore resources in Western Australia that would last a very long time.

"These are resources that should, even at increased rates of extraction, last for another century, and probably a lot more. And they're such high quality," he said.

Mr Mackenzie said the long-term prospectivity of BHP's iron ore in WA was the best in the world.

"We already have recognised that we have an abundance of riches, and we're quite pleased, hopefully in a humble way," Mr Mackenzie said.

"To maintain this business for another century, we probably have all the resources we require without any exploration success, but we will still look for some.

"We've been around for the long term, we're here for the long term ... Even though we have all these good resources, I tell you that we're only taking a tiny fraction of the world's resources, and as we progress as civilisation we use them more and more efficiently."

Meanwhile, Ken MacKenzie, told shareholders that the company was "deeply sorry" over the Samarco dam disaster of 2015.

"The failure of the dam operated by Samarco was a terrible tragedy, and we are all deeply sorry that this occurred," he said. "And I can assure you that we're committed to doing whatever we can to prevent an event like this happening again.

"This includes sharing the lessons we have learned with our industry colleagues. To this end, we've completed a comprehensive review of all significant dams across our operated assets and the assets of our non-operated joint ventures. This review confirmed the dams to be stable."

He also said it was vital that BHP was publicly accepted by the communities in which it operates, and that it needed "a social licence to operate" in those communities.

"If our host nations and communities do not trust us or do not feel they benefit from our presence, we eventually lose our ability to operate there - deservedly," he said. "Intense competition across borders for jobs and investment, technological disruption and globalisation all contribute to eroding the trust people have in big business and institutions.

"We know we need to do more than ever to achieve our social licence to operate."

Mr MacKenzie also said BHP would maintain a "relentless focus" driving value and returns for its army of shareholders.

He said that while undertaking a recent "listening tour" where he met more than 100 shareholders across eight countries he learned that BHP's foundations were strong.

"But there are areas where we need to sharpen our focus, areas with potential to be better, and areas we can build on. We must maintain a relentless focus on driving value and returns. We must never lose sight of this commitment to our shareholders, particularly in the context of the commodity cycle," he said.