Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from David Gagliano - Credit Suisse.
David Gagliano - Credit Suisse
I was wondering if you could just share your thoughts with regards to the timing of ramping back up at some of the other U.S. assets, such as Morenci.
Richard Adkerson
That’s something we began plans for it as we were curtailing operations. The decisions we made about curtailments were made and we were going to that process this time a year ago of looking at alternatives and not only thinking about what we could do to reduce in the near term, the high cost incremental pounds, but what will be the consequence of that in terms ramping up, because we were confident at some point we would do that.
We’re continuing to review those plans now. We are likely to make some changes in the near term, but to have a full scale return to maximum production is going to be contingent on our seeing a clear evidence of recovery of copper demand in the U.S. and Europe and we haven’t seen that yet. Same could be said for our molybdenum business. It’s going to be a situation that’s available to us, but we will act when the time is right when the market needs those commodities.
David Gagliano - Credit Suisse
As a follow-up, what’s this informant that the assets that shutdowns, they shutdown, scale down? On the mine site and delivery cost, how should we be thinking about that number beyond Q4 i.e., is that 1.15 per pound sustainable into 2010?
Richard Adkerson
It ends on input prices, about 25% of our cost company wide are energy cost. So the price of oil has risen some with the price copper. So that will have an input, but every time we go through one of these things and we’ve all went through several down cycles during the course of our carriers. The learn things about your operations and you learn how to manage things and as you ramp up. We’re going to be able to sustain some cost efficiencies that we’ve learned through this process.
Our safety statistics are much better now than they have been this the past because we have on average a much more experienced workforce, and we continually try to improve the safety programs, but there are things you learn going through a time like we did this past year, and we’re going to be able to hold on to those. So for purposes of your modeling I would suggest you look at the elements of our cost and come up with your own estimates about input costs, but the basic cost structure should be sustainable.
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