The mine is the result of a ten-year exploration and construction program based on a 1999 discovery of the porphyry copper deposit.

The finished product is a thickened copper-gold concentrate, which is pumped to a filtration and storage facility at the Benete port.

During 1984, Newmont Corporation undertook conceptual studies and identified the island arc terrain to the east of Bali as being prospective for epithermal gold mineralization.

Field checking of the anomaly identified altered and Copper-stained diorite float samples in the river bed, and subsequently, strong quartz pyrite stockworking and abundant Copper staining in outcrops within Green Creek.

[1] The deposit was named for the discovery outcrop, a bright-green oxide-copper occurrence; in Indonesian, "Batu Hijau" means "green rock.

"[2] Over the next ten years PT Newmont Nusa Tenggara delineate the resource and began developing the mine and building the required infrastructure.

The feasibility study was amended in July 1996 to reflect an updated mine plan based on additional drilling data, a change from fresh water to sea water processing, and a change from distributed diesel power generation to a central, coal-fired power plant.

In 1999 construction was completed and by the next year Batu Hijau was producing ore.[3] In 2016, Newmont Mining Corporation successfully completed the sale of its ownership stake in PT Newmont Nusa Tenggara, which operates the Batu Hijau copper and gold mine in Indonesia, to PT Amman Mineral Internasional.

Ore is removed from the mining face using P&H 4100 electric shovels and loaded into Caterpillar 793C haul trucks (pictured).

The reasoning behind the environmental claim is that in deeper waters, oxygen levels are low enough to substantially reduce the oxidation reactions that release heavy metals from the mine waste into the environment.

This claim for environmental conservation is most controversial: it does not take into account the fact that very little is known about the ecology of the ocean floors; nor does it account for underwater currents, or that geologic activity can disperse the waste into shallower waters (especially keeping in mind that the region is highly volatile in terms of volcanic activity); and it is very much challenged by that this mine's discharge has had at least three pipe breaks since its opening in 1999.