Copy/pasted from latest TDSI Action List. It’s not all copper in the text below but it’s easier to leave other stuff in - maintains context as well. I can see the situation with Schaft Creek not being resolved until 2016 (or even later) but it also seems to me that the longer Teck waits, the more expensive it’s going to be for Teck.

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Metals & Minerals

Industry Overview

Market Weight position maintained: Copper is trading at a 4-year low with uncertainty about China's demand in 2015 overhanging sentiment. Copper supply underperformed in 2014 with the market believed to be in slight surplus. We believe that mine supply of copper will struggle again in 2015 with a number of companies cutting production guidance for this year. With the other base metals taking their lead from copper, we expect broadly sideways trending metal prices. Over the medium term, we are more optimistic. With under-investment in new capacity and few new, large mining operations in the development pipeline, we expect tightening supply conditions to evolve in the second half of the decade. By 2017, we believe that copper, zinc, and nickel should be in supply deficit, which, in turn, should lead to higher prices.

In our opinion, copper continues to have the most attractive long-term fundamentals, despite modest surpluses in 2014 and 2015. The outlook for zinc is finally improving, with large legacy mines exhausting reserves, but, in our view, the following two questions remain: 1) How large are the off-exchange inventories?; and 2) Will Chinese zinc mine production respond to higher prices?

The Indonesian export ban on nickel ore, assuming that it stays in place, is expected to result in a sharp decline in Chinese production of nickel pig iron, which should shift the nickel market into a deficit beginning in H2/15. Hard coking coal is still facing surplus supply following a rebound in Australian production.

Despite closure announcements for some 32 million tonnes of production capacity during 2014, we continue to believe that a further 10–15 million tonnes of production still needs to be taken out of the market. We now believe that a recovery in coking coal prices could be protracted, particularly given slowing Chinese steel production growth. In fact, there is a growing view that steel production in China has peaked. We believe that uranium prices could continue to move sideways near term as the market remains well supplied and underlying utility demand for uranium remains highly discretionary.