I have been thinking the exact same things as you in the last...

I have been thinking the exact same things as you in the last few months JID. The geo-polititics and mine supply issues will provide a strong tail-wind to copper prices in the future.

I have already written off a lot of South American supply due to labor shortages, ageing mines, droughts, lack of water, stronger environmental regulation. I have already written off Oyu Tolgai in my own mind for political reasons. Zambia and the DRC are still the only obvious pathways to "easy" low cost additional production but they have their own political/jurisdictional risk/tax/royalty profiles, and some big infrastructure hurdles to overcome. In Australia BHP have missed their chance to expand Olympic Dam, and Oak Dam will be decades away, SFR are out of options for DeGrussa and their future development pipeline looks mediocre at best. Just about the only ASX listed copper company to successfully execute expansion is OZL.

Thats why I have been looking at any decent deposits located in Australia, Canada and the USA. There are a few previously uneconomic low-grade copper deposits that were never "good enough" to get financing and need very high sustained copper prices to get them across the line. Kalkaroo(HAV), Mt Roseby(AOH/C6C) and Nifty (MLX/CYM) are all projects that essentially got stalled/made marginal by low copper prices/mismanagement and lack of finance since the 1990s.