Australian diversified natural resources company BHP Billiton (ASX:BHP) has signalled it could drive a shake-up of the global pricing of potash if its $43 billion bid for Potash Corp of Saskatchewan Inc. succeeds.

The resource giant would be able to influence pricing, as it had in iron ore and coal, if it takes over the world's largest fertiliser producer, according to Senior resources analyst Gavin Wendt of research house Mine Life.

Contracts for potash deliveries are currently not listed on an exchange, and benchmark prices are only determined by an alliance of Canadian potash producers that market through a partnership called Canpotex.

BHP chief executive Marius Kloppers said he would honour the commitments of the Canpotex partners, who speak for 40 per cent of the global potash trade, but the arrangements of that consortium were not made public.

"Our basic long-term plan . . . does involve running low-cost assets that naturally should be the assets that dispatch first into the market on a full-capacity utilisation basis, and wherever possible we do transform markets into pricing mechanisms where we get today's cost every day," he said.

BHP is leaving the door open on the sale of non-core assets of Potash if its bid was successful, referring to comments made by Potash Corp chief executive Bill Doyle that the commodity had better fundamentals than some of the secondary businesses in the portfolio, nitrogen and phosphate.

"I wouldn't say that my opinion differs in any extent from that," he said.

"You can see from the brightest line, Potash Corp capital redeployment program, that their growth program is primarily geared towards becoming a bigger potash producer relative to those other businesses."