Googling the title should get you bejond the paywall ... worked...

Googling the title should get you bejond the paywall ... worked for me ...

Anyways:

"It might appear odd and unfortunate timing for BHP Billiton to make a major and very bullish presentation on its copper business, given that the copper price has just hit six-year lows and China’s smelters yesterday agreed to cut their output by 350,000 tonnes next year. The presentation by the president of BHP’s copper business, Daniel Malchuk, however, isn’t out of tune with the views of all the big copper producers, who regard copper as having the best longer-term prospects of any of the major metals. While conceding that the market for copper was moving from one where supply and demand were roughly in balance to one of “modest” oversupply through to about 2019 as new supply enters the market (BHP estimates 2.7 million tonnes of net new supply by 2017), Malchuk was nevertheless very optimistic about the longer-term demand picture and BHP’s positioning within it. That’s despite the obvious slowing in China’s demand."

Main arguments:

"The extent of the price decline might reflect copper’s status as one of the most ‘financialised’ of assets, which inflated the price during the commodity boom but now, with hedge funds and other financial players using it as a proxy to effectively take short positions against China’s economy, may now be having an exaggerated impact in the other direction.
A more fundamental set of factors is that grades from the big established mines have been falling steadily -- BHP says by about 19 per cent since 2000, with a further 17 per cent decline by 2025 -- reserves have been depleting and there have been few large-scale and high-quality discoveries to replace them.
To the extent that there have been new ore bodies found, like Oyu Tolgoi or Las Bambas, they tend to be in difficult geographies and higher-risk jurisdictions, adding to infrastructure, development and production costs and extending development timelines. The whole cost curve for copper is being pushed up."
(more)