Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Mark Connelly - Stern Agee.
Mark Connelly - Stern Agee
The first question is about profitability of the U.S. versus non-U.S. phosphate. I don’t really want to talk about the short term. I mean obviously it’s a tough market no matter where you’re selling and you’re taking advantage of that in what I think is a very good way. But as you think about you know a year out or two years out as that business normalizes, you’ve said that you want to keep those channels open without short-changing your domestic customers. I was surprised by how long the list was of countries where you’ve sold phosphate and so I’m just trying to get a sense of you know your longer term view of the relative profitability of shipping offshore.
Stephen R. Wilson
That’s a difficult question because it’s a dynamic marketplace and certainly even the chain is dynamic because we have some producers in parts of the world that don’t produce on a continuous basis because of their cost profile. We are I think flexible enough to recognize opportunities where they occur and redirect product as it seems appropriate. We want, you know as I mentioned last quarter, we want relationships in many of these countries. And while we have moved product to a lot of countries, some of the volumes are relatively modest and that’s fine with us. We see niches that we can exploit and we’ll continue to do that.
In the short run, even though your question was a longer run question, I don’t think we’ve disappointed domestic customers because the demand certainly isn’t there. And our core market is likely to continue to be North America. As far as you know as we’re concerned, we really don’t try to predict where the sweet spot’s going to be. We just want to be ready to take advantage of it when it shows up.
Mark Connelly - Stern Agee
And just a quick question on your outlook for sulfur, you know we’ve obviously seen crude move up an awful lot but we haven’t seen sulfur move up. Just wondering what your outlook is for the next say 6 or 12 months.
Stephen R. Wilson
Well we haven’t settled yet for the fourth quarter. We’re expecting something in the $10 range as far as an increase in sulfur costs. Beyond that there’s probably more upside in the pipeline, but we don’t see that being anything to give us heartburn compared to what we experienced in 2008.
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