Can you give an overview of Freeport-McMoRan’s (Freeport) performance over the past year in the western USA?

Despite some challenges associated with weather at the beginning of 2023, Freeport-McMoRan has performed well over the past 18 months. We have been extremely focused on executing our safe production plan over the past few years. We have also remained focused on what we have coined as 'leach to the last drop,' looking for incremental copper growth through the leaching processes. A third pillar to the company's success has been our focus on the fundamentals of maintenance and reliability, ensuring that our operations are reliable, allowing us to execute our plans.

Can you comment on Freeport’s expansion activities at the Bagdad asset?

Bagdad is a huge growth opportunity for Freeport, and we currently are evaluating the feasibility of doubling the concentrator capacity at the site. We expect the feasibility study to be completed by Q4 2023, after which we will decide about building a new concentrator facility. In advance of an expansion, we must progress work on a new tailings facility. Work on this new facility is underway. Meanwhile, we have divided the new concentrator project into two phases: design and feasibility, and construction of the mill itself.

Can you comment on Freeport’s plan to advance Lone Star?

Several years ago, we decided to go after incremental copper at Safford via the Lonestar oxide project to take the production capacity up to approximately 300 million lb/y. We are well on our way to that, and we are developing a model to help us define the potential for a much broader footprint at Safford.

Is Freeport utilizing any advanced technologies such as machine learning or AI?

AI and data science are built into our 'leach to the last drop' effort, providing insights and driving some of the actions of this effort. When we started this effort, we identified that we had 38 billion lb of contained copper in our stockpiles that were previously deemed unrecoverable. With innovative leaching technologies, we can tap into this resource to produce incremental copper. This innovative leaching process is much more sustainable, requires less water and energy, and allows us to produce the lowest carbon footprint copper. We are targeting 200 million lb/y of incremental copper by the end of 2023, and then we want to drive that growth up to 800 million lb/y in a longer time horizon.

What is Freeport’s approach to electrification and automation?

Regarding electrification, we have been testing Ultra Class trucks at our Cerro Verde operation in Peru to inform future decisions organizationally around the right haulage fleet for us, both from an economic perspective and ESG perspective. Freeport is also currently kicking off an effort to implement autonomous haulage at our Bagdad operation in Arizona. In approximately three years, we will be the first large-scale operation in the US to have a fully autonomous haulage fleet.

How do you assess the current copper market, and what factors do you believe will drive price in the coming months?

The Chinese economy has been struggling on the housing side, which is having a downward pull on the copper price. At the same time, the EV market and electrification and infrastructure projects are taking off at a faster pace than expected, which puts upward pressure on the copper price. There are these counterbalancing impacts on the market today, which is why we are seeing fluctuations and variability in the copper price on a short-term basis as the market responds to these various factors.

In the long term, the demand for copper will significantly increase to support electrification and decarbonization, and the market will be fundamentally underserved for the supply side. We are extremely optimistic about what this dynamic will do for the copper price, and Freeport will continue to position itself to support the growing copper demand as projected.

What are some important catalysts on the horizon for Freeport in the US?

We will continue to grow our business in terms of reliability and efficiency and will also continue to invest in developing our workforce. We also remain focused on leveraging AI, data analytics, and data science to identify opportunities to improve even more than we are today.