Dear Agoracom,

I like to put a couple of ideas/questions to Bell management and Timothy Marsh regarding both the price and characteristics of copper mining.

There's an independent consultant named Jack Lifton, who really been hammering the table for rare earth elements (REEs) in a series of articles.

These "technology metals" as Lipton has tagged them, are critical in production of batteries, magnets, solar photovoltaic cells -- a host of clean tech, military and high-end electronic applications. Each Toyota Prius, for example, has some 30 kg of REEs. Apparantly, REEs are critical in the production of new applications...importantly from new and growing market. Segments that have been targeted by various stimulus packages around the global in amounts of hundreds of billions of dollars.

That's the demand side.

On the supply side, over 90% of REEs are produced in China and they have been restricting exports via increased quotes and/or taxes.

A recent article, China takes charge of keys to technologies' future, notes:

"China's strategy, said Yoichi Sato, head of the rare earth division of Mitsui, suggested a complex game being played between Beijing and the world's rare earth consumers. The perceived idea behind China restricting its rare earth exports is twofold.

First, it gives its own high-tech industries a chance to flourish and gain a huge competitive edge over rivals in Asia, Europe and the US — a politically useful gambit by a Government whose legitimacy lies in the provision of jobs and economic growth.

Second, it may force foreign companies to move their high-tech factories and research centres to China to circumvent quotas, a move that Japanese companies will resist for fear of losing industrial secrets."

If the above proves to be right, that would may mean that sources of REEs outside China -- and in political secure areas -- will become increasingly valuable.

OK, so what do REEs have to do with copper and base metals in general?

From a recent Lifton article called The Technology Metals Age:

"Some of the most important of the so-called minor metals are only found as by-products of base metals. The base metal copper is a source of 75% of the world’s molybdenum and rhenium. Copper is also the source of 95% of the world’s tellurium and selenium.

And when they reduce the production of base metals, they also reduce the production of molybdenum, rhenium, selenium, and tellurium. So what? Well, you can’t make a jet engine or a rocket engine without rhenium. First Solar Corporation in Ohio makes cadmium telluride thinfilm photovoltaic cells; the cadmium comes from zinc, and the telluriumcomes from copper. Therefore, the reduction in base metals production has also reduced the production of the key minor technology metals used for solar—and there is no substitute. So right this minute we’re in the situation of running on inventory, which is not large, and recycling is almost non-existent for these materials because their uses are dissipated."

Lifton get really interesting here:

"I predicted at a recent conference that copper would hit perhaps as much as $10 a pound by 2011. Everybody said, oh, you’re crazy. But I’ll tell you who didn’t tell me I was crazy—all the men who were on those panels. One of them said to me, you know what’s wrong with your prediction? I said what? He said you’re way low—we know that there are critical technologies that are now based on derivatives of copper."

Lifton may be well "out there." I'll let you, gentle reader, decide for yourself.

But even if he's only partially correct, we could see a lot higher copper prices down the road. And higher copper prices are hugely benefical for BCU...more so if we find what the company thinks may be the case at Kabba.

So here are my questions for Dr. Marsh:

First, what does he think of Lifton's idea of REEs and other specialty metals driving the price of copper and base metals higher?

And, given that just a wee north of $4 is the all time copper price high, is a price 2 and 1/2 times that a possibilty? A possibility, of course, after we come out of "The Great Recession".

And finally, do we have at BCU's various copper properties, any indications of REEs present along with base metal credits?

And of cource, eveyone else is welcome to chime in with their thoughts, ideas and rants...