NEW YORK — Billionaire mining entrepreneur Robert Friedland will look to Asian copper users, including carmakers, to help finance Ivanhoe Australia Ltd.’s mines, which may cost more than $1 billion to develop.

Friedland said he’s “very confident” of getting Japanese, South Korean or Chinese companies to help fund Melbourne-based Ivanhoe Australia’s first mine, the Mount Dore project, in return for copper-purchase agreements. Revenue from the mine and the nearby Starra Line gold project will help finance further studies into the viability of the larger Mount Elliott deposit, which is also in the Cloncurry region, he said.

Friedland, who made his initial fortune from the discovery and sale to Inco Ltd. of the Voiseys Bay nickel deposit in Canada, is betting that the Cloncurry region will be one of the world’s largest sources of copper. The chairman of Ivanhoe Mines Ltd., which owns 83 per cent of the Australian unit, believes carmakers will want to secure a “captive supply” of copper as more of the metal is used in hybrid cars.

“There’s a plethora of players interested in the Mount Elliott mining district,” Friedland said in a Sept. 9 interview at an industry conference in Denver. “They’re desperate for long-term, secure sources of copper metal to commit to the industrial capacity to build hybrid cars.”

Ivanhoe Australia will choose whether to sell a stake in each mine to different buyers or to enter an agreement with a “government-related” company to help finance all of the projects, Friedland said.

The cost of digging Mount Elliott may be more than $1 billion, depending on how much ore is discovered, he said.

Ivanhoe has started discussions with potential financiers and has already turned down propositions from two wellknown mining companies, Friedland said.

“We’re very confident we can get offtake agreements from the Japanese, the Chinese or the Koreans to finance the copper mine at Mount Dore,” Friedland said. The project “should be financeable from buyers of copper metal, like Toyota Motor company.”

Ivanhoe Australia said it has started an initial study on developing Mount Dore into a mine that can produce 25,000 to 35,000 tons of copper a year.