Editorial: What happened to the copper rally?

The copper prices above US$4 per lb. enjoyed in 2011 are a fading memory, but the massive mine-production capacity built up in the intervening years is a price-killing nightmare miners live with daily, although for now they prefer to address it with top-to-bottom cost-cutting, rather than the outright production cuts that might better support copper prices. After rallying in tight correlation with oil prices for the past two months, copper prices have also diverged sharply from oil prices since the end of March, sinking towards US$2 per lb., even as oil soars past the US$40-per-barrel mark — further bringing the pain to any copper miners with significant diesel costs. Read the entire story at www.NorthernMiner.com/commodities-markets/editorial