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Gold/Mining/Energy : Precious and Base Metal Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TheSlowLane who wrote (27690)	2/5/2004 10:16:40 AM
From: Stephen O	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 39344

Copper Price Heading for Record High, Newmont President Says By Claudia Carpenter Feb. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Copper prices are heading for a record high this year, Newmont Mining Corp. President Pierre Lassonde said in an interview. Copper futures in New York have climbed 12 percent this year to a six-year high, largely on disruptions in production and increased metals demand in China, the world's biggest copper consumer. Copper inventories in warehouses monitored by the London Metal Exchange have dropped 19 percent this year to a 34- month low. ``The way inventories have been declining, there won't be a pound of inventory left in warehouses of the world by May,'' Lassonde said. ``I would not be surprised to see a record copper price this year.'' Copper for March delivery rose 0.6 cent to $1.1745 a pound on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. The record high of $1.80 was set in 1973, Lassonde said. Newmont, the world's biggest gold producer, also produces copper at the Batu Hijau mine in Indonesia and Golden Grove in Australia. Newmont's fourth-quarter copper production fell 4 percent from the same period a year earlier, the company said today. Global copper production has been disrupted as New Orleans- based Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. had two landslides in the fourth quarter at its Grasberg mine in Indonesia, the world's second-biggest copper mine. Copper demand worldwide exceeded output from refineries and scrap yards by 360,000 metric tons in the first 10 months of 2003, the International Copper Study Group in Lisbon said in a Jan. 13 report. Worldwide copper usage is expected to rise 5.5 percent to 16.36 million tons, led by increases in Europe and Asia, the Study Group said. ``We think the recovery is much stronger and more broad- based than the general consensus would be,'' Lassonde said.