Oil Exports and the Falsity of Headline Numbers.

EIA:

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."
-- Winston Churchill

The problem then becomes that the truth is no longer considered a valid point of view or even open for discussion. The lie is so ingrained as it drowns out any hope that truth will appear. Take for example the myth that the US manufacturing base is collapsing. This lie is dispelled by the CFMMI Data Series from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Every decade the index (IPMFG) has been higher. That is, the index from the 80s was higher than the 70s, and the 90s was greater than the 80s, and 2000s was higher than the 90s. Even now the index is higher marginally than it was 10 years ago, even with the economic lost decade. This index is not affected by inflation and is growing on average faster than the population also.

The New Memes


That is simply stating the facts {from
Weekly U.S. Exports of Crude Oil and Petroleum Products (Thousand Barrels per Day)}. The problem becomes when this is interpreted to mean that prices in the US are too high because of shipping US finished petroleum products overseas. I could not find the incidence when oil executives were grilled on whether any oil products were shipped overseas during Katrina, but this article explains some of this type of reasoning: Senator Demands Detail on U.S. Oil Exports. First, Ron Wyden is looking for a scapegoat as the information about imports and exports are easily available at the U.S. Energy Information Administration but does not include firm level data.

Secondly, the falsity is that petroleum products exported are of the same quality and basis for the gasoline that goes into our cars. This forms the basis for an argument that goes the US should not drill in ANWR as most will be exported to Asian countries such as Japan. As a stable trading partner and political ally, I find no reason to not export whatever they are willing to pay for. But more importantly, what the US exports to Japan is mostly a by-product of the oil refinery process called petroleum coke. Over the last two years, around 75% of Japan's imports of petroleum products was petcoke. (You can find the information at:
Total Crude Oil and Products Exports by Destination.)

Where are the Exports Going?
Below is a list of countries by export volume with numbers included of average monthly exports in thousands of barrels and percentage increase of volume in the last two years vs. September 2005 to August 2008.

One thing to notice on this list is that a few of them, and most importantly the top two, are actually the top in exporting crude oil to the US in reverse order. Looking further down the list and specifically looking for large percentage increases, it is easy to see that many are small countries close to the US and/or also US suppliers. For example, Columbia, Costa Rica, and Nigeria increased their imports from the US by 346.25%, 349.40%, and 223.63% respectively. I would expect that their demand for processed petroleum products will continue to increase dramatically as they grow each of their respective economies.
What does this mean?
It means: it is best to take any factoid as just a starting point and that delving deeper into the numbers is a better practice. Just like the manufacturing sectors, the oil industry facts are often hidden behind emotions and simplistic explanation models. For example, the oil industry is stated as an oil monopoly when in fact it is better described as an oil oligopoly. Using Yahoo search engine for "oil monopoly" provides nearly 40 million results and for "oil oligopoly" provides a little over 400 thousand results. It seems more writers need to go back to Economics 101. One factoid is how the barrel of crude oil is broken down into its constituent parts as this next passage summarizes.

Crude Oil : A Breakdown of Refined Volumes
The largest share of the 42 gallons of crude oil ends up as a finished motor gasoline. Motor gasoline accounts for 19.65 gallons (~ 47%) of the finished products produced from a barrel of crude oil. Next is distillate fuel or diesel at 10.03 gallons (~ 24%) . A distant third is jet fuel at only 4.07 gallons per barrel (~ 10%) of crude. Residual oil is typically around 1.72 gallons per barrel (~ 4%).

Other petroleum products that are created from a barrel of oil during the refining process include: still gas, petroleum coke, liquified refinery gas, asphalt and various oils for lubricants, kerosene, waxes and other miscellaneous products. These "other" hydrocarbon products account for the final 15% of the barrel or around 6.53 gallons of the 42 gallon barrel.

The article goes on to explain that diesel is also a primary driver of crude oil demand. Thus the one that is in short supply given the market price will be the driver of quantity supplied to the market. This also may help explain why high income countries trade petroleum products across their borders in both directions. In the short list above we saw the US exporting to Netherlands, Singapore, and Japan. Further down the list included countries such as Spain, France, Germany and Greece.

If the US wants to upset our suppliers of crude, or our trading partners, or even small nations in the region then it might be a good idea to restrict exports of petroleum products. But if want the efficiency of the markets to work, then the US needs to encourage more domestic production of refined petroleum products. This a value added product that uses our depth of human capital as well as extensive amounts of capital, while leaving our trading partners opportunities to specialize in what they do best. The breadth and depth of petroleum products, including all the blends of gasoline, makes the US a natural for increased specialization in this export area. Of course, this is a sector that could be called structurally rigid.


Misc. Links:
U.S. Imports & Exports
U.S. Total Crude Oil and Products Imports

BizzyBlog

Weekend Reading – Santa Clause Rally or Grinchy Finish to 2010? | Phil’s Stock World

IS THE ISM NEW ORDERS:INVENTORIES SENDING RECESSION WARNING?

How to Read the Data: ISM Manufacturing Orders vs Inventory

Fake-Out Thursday – Oil Scam Continues Unabated - Phil's Favorites

More in the Box Thinking about Populations...

"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn."

Recently I have had the opportunity to explore some issues involving population of the world questions and so called "stresses on our environment", with possibly more discussions in the near future. I included the quote above since the paradigm of the "Population Bomb" is so ingrained in our conscious mind that we {at least a good number of us have been raised under it} accept anything that comes from so called experts. We have in essence failed to see the underlying forces as to why we see bad news at nearly every turn. We are like the old widow that reads the paper every day and imagines the world outside as one scary place that is only good to hurry back and forth for life's daily needs.

While this is trite and trivial, maybe we have failed to learn for ourselves and to question the prevailing paradigms of our time {or at least to have the right teachers as the beginning quote would suggest}. Although Searching for the Right Passage from Childhood and School By Maurice Gibbons presents a lot of physical manifestations of a quest for young people before their adulthood, there is still the inner and outer "jihad" {struggle in the basic sense}. And each must choose their own path of what is the truth to them.

So instead of dealing with the hundreds of gloom and doom forecasts {e.g. Mega-droughts In Sub-Saharan Africa Normal For Region: Droughts Likely To Worsen With Climate Change or Ocean Dead Zones Likely To Expand: Increasing Carbon Dioxide And Decreasing Oxygen Make It Harder For Deep-sea Animals To Breath or Too many ’straws’ sucking water out of the Colorado River} let me start with the most headline grabbing article that has the "experts" tell us the most pressing problems in the world in the article entitled: Worst Environmental Problem? Overpopulation, Experts Say

Overpopulation is the world’s top environmental issue, followed closely by climate change and the need to develop renewable energy resources to replace fossil fuels, according to a survey of the faculty at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF).

Well this non-expert thinks that if you can solve the energy problem {to most people's satisfaction} then it would solve the carbon problem and thus the strain on the environment, thus on casual observation they have the order reversed and was similar to an analysis I came away with nearly 30 years ago.

Overpopulation came out on top, with several professors pointing out its ties to other problems that rank high on the list.

“Overpopulation is the only problem,” said Dr. Charles A. Hall, a systems ecologist. “If we had 100 million people on Earth — or better, 10 million — no others would be a problem.” (Current estimates put the planet’s population at more than six billion.)

Dr. Allan P. Drew, a forest ecologist, put it this way: “Overpopulation means that we are putting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than we should, just because more people are doing it and this is related to overconsumption by people in general, especially in the ‘developed’ world.”

I have heard about wacko environmentalists talking about 1 billion or less but 100 or even 10 million starts to get really ridiculous. Even the Americas supported at least 40 million with the most primitive of cultivation methods. Unless the "experts" think the native Americans were ravaging the environment then at least that should provide a basis for what amount is allowed even in their criteria. Honestly I think the world can support 15-20 Billion humans especially if we think in concepts of what the minimum humans consume which is the carbon we expel in breathing and the carbon in the food we eat. Any other resource could be traded for dirt.

What I mean by dirt is the fact that the basic chemicals are in the dirt like silica, nitrogen and carbon and everything else is just transformation of the basic building blocks into patterns that would suit human consumption. It is not like nature is really upset that humans have dug something out of the ground that no any other living thing needs.

Rounding out the top 10 issues on the ESF list are overconsumption, the need for more sustainable practices worldwide, the growing need for energy conservation, the need for humans to see themselves as part of the global ecosystem, overall carbon dioxide emissions, the need to develop ways to produce consumer products from renewable resources, and dwindling fresh water resources.

While that is an interesting list a more practical list is provided by Bjorn Lomborg the Global prioritizer and with The outcome of Copenhagen Consensus 2008. Of course it is interesting that they place Global Warming at position 14th first since they break it down by category. Even that is just trying to increase technology to help low income countries, as Jeffery Sachs would also support. Other than that the other criteria is just mitigating the effects of global warming.

A fairly long article but a good read is: Bound to Burn Humanity will keep spewing carbon into the atmosphere, but good policy can help sink it back into the earth. I do not share the pessimism of the writer on many of the points but the conclusions are well worth the read to build his points on. Which I include a part here:

If we’re truly worried about carbon, we must instead approach it as if the emissions originated in an annual eruption of Mount Krakatoa. Don’t try to persuade the volcano to sign a treaty promising to stop. Focus instead on what might be done to protect and promote the planet’s carbon sinks—the systems that suck carbon back out of the air and bury it. Green plants currently pump 15 to 20 times as much carbon out of the atmosphere as humanity releases into it—that’s the pump that put all that carbon underground in the first place, millions of years ago. At present, almost all of that plant-captured carbon is released back into the atmosphere within a year or so by animal consumers. North America, however, is currently sinking almost two-thirds of its carbon emissions back into prairies and forests that were originally leveled in the 1800s but are now recovering. For the next 50 years or so, we should focus on promoting better land use and reforestation worldwide. Beyond that, weather and the oceans naturally sink about one-fifth of total fossil-fuel emissions. We should also investigate large-scale options for accelerating the process of ocean sequestration.

Peak Resources Part III...Copper

In my other posts on More peak resource information...Copper!, I showed how when copper prices rose then the market found substitutes. One was the elimination/reduction in the use of copper in coinage. And the second one was the rise of the use of fiber optics in communications instead of copper. There was also another development that helped extend recovery of copper (Man's knowledge of copper must date back for at least six thousand years):

At the beginning of the present century the world's annual demand for copper was about half a million tons; the United States produced about half this total, whilst Britain's output had fallen to a mere token figure. Today the annual consumption is now more than nine times as large. This dramatic rise in the intervening sixty years can be attributed partly to population growth but mainly to the tremendous technological advances which have received impetus from two World Wars. In the Second World War the demand for copper most certainly could not have been satisfied, but for an invention in 1921, when Perkins patented his process of chemical flotation. This made it possible to mine ores which, up to that time, had been regarded almost everywhere as worthless. Some attempts at flotation of crushed ores had been made ever since 1860, but the process only became commercially important after the 1914-18 war. The Raw Material

This site should also be noted for the history of Copper.

Without going into a great deal about Hubbert peak theory, I want to show his basic bell curve that he uses for his theories on "Peak Oil":

So now let us look at Yearly Silver Production in metric tonnes (1900-to-2001)

This is very important since we can see at least 4 "peaks" with the tail looking like another peak. So much for copper showing any aspect of Peak production even after 6 thousand years. We have to wonder if "Peak Oil" has any merit also.

Haha, fooled my self, that was silver above and now for copper:

The Y scale is Metric Tons. Again we see at least three peaks earlier in the 20th century. But even after 6 thousand years we are not at the "Peak"?
Note: the two previous charts are derived from numbers out of Historical Statistics for Mineral and Material Commodities in the United States.

Links:
Penny less than sum of parts

Interesting facts from Copper.org:

The Hubbert Peak for World Oil

The Political Economy of Alternative Energy

Let me just preface this piece with that I love Dr. Arnold Kling's insight and brilliance. But I was a little disappointed in his latest attack piece on Al Gore.

"Gore has had a consistent position of purchasing carbon offsets to offset the family's carbon footprint — a concept the right-wing fails to understand. Gore's office explains what Mr. Gore has asked is that every family calculate their carbon footprint and try to reduce it as much as possible. Once they have done so, he then advocates that they purchase offsets, as the Gore's do, to bring their footprint down to zero."
-- Denny Haldeman (scroll down to email responses to the op-ed)
Suppose that a friend of yours is trying to lose weight, and he tells you, "If I eat this salad, it will be good for me. So then I can have cake for dessert." What would you tell your friend?

Al Gore is trying to say that by investing in alternative forms of energy, he is "offsetting" the heavy use of conventional electricity for his home. This is like saying that eating salad entitles a dieter to enjoy cake for dessert.

Yes the desire to get to do bad things when you first deceive yourself by doing good is a natural human trait (or was it only taught by authoritarian parents?). And we will ignore the glaring question as to whether Al Gore has reduced his carbon footprint as much as possible. But Dr. Kling has failed to be the investigative reporter he should be.

First, our little thread at AlGore - Do as I say not as I do started the discussion off with a link to Gore isn't quite as green as he's led the world to believe.

But according to public records, there is no evidence that Gore has signed up to use green energy in either of his large residences. When contacted Wednesday, Gore's office confirmed as much but said the Gores were looking into making the switch at both homes. Talk about inconvenient truths.

And then a piece entitled Al Gore’s Personal Energy Use Is His Own “Inconvenient Truth”, which brings into question whether he is doing everything to reduce his demand for energy and more importantly carbon emitting energy. Next we see that This time, voting climate favors Al, which points out that: The snitch said fewer than 300 people requested the special ballot in the documentary category, which was won by Al Gore's "An inconvenient Truth" Sunday.

So when I came across the post entitled: The Profit of Doom I noticed the writer talking about purchasing stocks for carbon offsets. But from my prior research and reading a variety of articles, then purchasing any stock is not part of the scheme. To atone for your sins you are not suppose to benefit from your penance. So I tended to ignore the messages but did read the link to Group questions level of energy use at Gore home.

Gore's power bill shows, however, that the former vice president may be doing just that. Gore purchased 108 blocks of "green power" for each of the past three months, according to a summary of the bills. That's a total of $432 a month Gore paid extra for solar or other renewable energy sources.

Thus it sort of shot down some of the points in the above blog post. So I ignored the rest of the article including this portion:

"They, of course, also do the carbon emissions offset," she said.

That means figuring out how much carbon is emitted from home power use, and vehicle and plane travel, then paying for projects that will offset that with use of renewable energy, such as solar power.

Gore helped found Generation Investment Management, through which he and others pay for offsets. The firm invests the money in solar, wind and other projects that reduce energy consumption around the globe, she said.

Luckily, someone posted a link to Generation Investment Management and after looking at the site it was easy that this was no carbon offset plan but just a normal equity fund that invested in a variety of common stocks. But the real break came from finding the link to SEC Filing FORM TYPE:13F-HR. And what stocks are included in this portfolio?

A list of their holdings, and value in thousands:
AFLAC INC----------------13315
AQUANTIVE INC------------4615
AUTODESK INC-------------12712
BECTON DICKINSON & CO----13785
BLACKBAUD INC------------4765
GENERAL ELECTRIC CO------19565
GREENHILL & CO INC-------9473
JOHNSON CTLS INC---------13711
LABORATORY CORP AMER HLDGS-9935
METABOLIX INC------------5209
NORTHERN TR CORP---------14333
NUVEEN INVTS INC---------7389
STAPLES INC--------------11921
SYSCO CORP---------------11085
TECHNE CORP--------------22309
UBS AG-------------------14079
VCA ANTECH INC-----------4858
WATERS CORP--------------8875
WHOLE FOODS MKT INC------4427

So Staples qualifies for Carbon Offsets? And while I have not looked at all the companies, most do not have anything to do with renewable energy or solving global warming.

So a good scam when you can pull it off. We came up with the analogy that a Priest sins and for his penance he must tithe to the collection plate that he gets to skim off the excess.

Links:
Energy Fallacy

Gore isn't quite as green as he's led the world to believe

Al Gore’s Personal Energy Use Is His Own “Inconvenient Truth”

This time, voting climate favors Al

The Profit of Doom

Generation Team: Hon. Al Gore is Chairman

GENERATION INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT LLP-SEC Filing

Is Al Gore Really "Carbon Neutral"?

Water Conservation Part Two.

This post will be a compilation of water saving techniques and devices and not meant as a recommendation or endorsement.
I had heard of No-Flush Waterless Urinal for some time but just recently saw one at UCSB.

They all work like the picture below shows as I have seen. There are additional links for all items in the links section.

It works on a chemical trap (Blue Seal as above) that keeps the smell from escaping and the overflow spills into a normal drain as the trap is filled.

Not that the She-Pee Urinals will catch on except for remote/special events (How to beat the Glasto toilet horror). But this has not stopped the development of a P-Mate for Women that is a disposable cardboard funnel to allow women to pee standing up, and the P-Mate Urinal stalls.

Warning next link is graphic, that talks about Advice on how to Pee Standing up for Females.

So if there is waterless urinals how about toilets? Envirolet® Composting Toilets by Sancor™ uses a fanned aeration system.

And SunMar® self contained composters use a handled rotating drum (much as a normal composter does).

Lastly there are some basement types as in:
Waterless composting toilet systems make too much sense!! and Waterless Toilets. But I am not sure how the solid waste gets down the drain without water and thus defeat the benefits.

But one area that I feel would be good to use this technology is rest stops or public restrooms that are not high traffic areas. Waterless toilets or 'dry sanitation' systems has a couple of ideas on this:

If these techniques above did not reduce the smell from normal outhouses then maybe the aeration system shown above might also be a possibility.

Another technique that is much easier to implement is the Dual Flush Toilets. I first read about this in the 70's when it was being used in Japan, and is still the simple concept that if it is liquid waste and maybe a small wad of toilet paper then only a smaller amount of water is needed to flush the waste. According to the web site, average old toilets used 18.8 gallons per day and the new low flow ones are at an average of 9.1 gallons per day and their new dual flush is 6.9 gallons per day. Instead of legislating the low flow toilets I wish that congress had let the market decide on how best to reduce water consumption, but that is for another day.

And now for something completely different...

Art's glass toilet tests courage

An artist has created a usable public toilet in a glass cube to challenge the curiosity - and bravery - of people passing London's Tate Britain gallery.

Monica Bonvicini said visitors would have to "defy their own embarrassment" to use the minimalist cubicle, made from one-way mirrored glass.

It is impossible to see into the toilet, which will be free to use, but the person inside can see passers-by.

The work, called Don't Miss A Sec, uses a prison loo as a historical reference.

Clivus Multrum, Inc. manufactures composting toilets and greywater irrigation systems for distribution throughout North America and beyond. Please contact us to discuss your project in detail.

Links:
WaterLess
New way to go green: Waterless urinals make a splash
Case Study for Flushless Urinals
Composting Toilets
What is a Composting Toilet System and How Does it Compost?
Simple Home Repairs: Splash Blocks and Drywells
Dry Well-Wiki

In Colorado, Rain Barrels Are Illegal. Yup. » GroovyGreen.com

Is America Ready for the 'Smart Toilet?' For the kitchen and bath industry, the toilet is the final frontier.

Peak Copper/Fiber Optic

The history of fiber optics is very interesting from above link.

Development of hardware for the first transatlantic fiber cable showed that single-mode systems were feasible, so when deregulation opened the long-distance phone market in the early 1980s, the carriers built national backbone systems of single-mode fiber with 1300-nm sources. That technology has spread into other telecommunication applications, and remains the standard for most fiber systems.

So the corresponding buildout of the fiber optic network was when copper prices was highest...

This is hard to see but the dates are from January 97. The next article is a little old but it was nice to see a backward look at what they felt back then. In the good old days of 3/26/01 of Will fiber optics overtake copper in backbone?

In every sense, fiber optics is a remarkable technology. One day it will replace copper cable. Fiber advocates, including Senior Analyst P.J. Connolly, can't understand why all companies aren't already reworking their infrastructure to bring fiber to every desk. On the flip side, copper supporters, such as East Coast Technical Director Tom Yager, think those dollars and that effort would be better invested in solving other network problems.

This has not happened yet, but we can see with copper costing more and more that the incentive now becomes when replacing or building a backbone that these decisions will become easier with lower relative costs than copper.

For one, I'm surprised that I have to mention lightning to a Texan. Also, although it sounds like something from James Bond, copper networks are a source of radio frequency emissions. If someone is motivated enough, they can capture your traffic without ever touching your physical infrastructure.

This might be off the topic but yes this I have heard from the fact of stealing cable with a simple loop antenna around a cable wire.

Frankly, I think your adaptability speech would read better if spoken to a mirror. Wake up, Tom, and realize that the endgame for copper has started. No, the transition to fiber won't happen overnight; I expect it will take at least five years, and probably ten, for fiber to overtake copper in the total number of corporate connections.

You're right after all when you talk about the momentum behind copper. It's cheap, and it's the lowest common denominator. I'd recommend it if you planned to throw everything away in three to five years anyway. But if you expect to be around for a while, invest in fiber. You'll be glad you did.

Well copper may be cheap relative to other stuff but much more than most substances.

But now the question becomes: is Silicon (or more specifically silica used for fiber optics and glass) readily available? Is the new substance just as likely to reach peak production as copper?

Silicon (Latin: silicium) is the chemical element in the periodic table that has the symbol Si and atomic number 14. A tetravalent metalloid, silicon is less reactive than its chemical analog carbon. It is the second most abundant element in the Earth's crust, making up 25.7% of it by weight. It occurs in clay, feldspar, granite, quartz and sand, mainly in the form of silicon dioxide (also known as silica) and as silicates, (various compounds containing silicon, oxygen and one or another metal). Silicon is the principal component of most semiconductor devices and, in the form of siliica and silicates, in glass, cement, ceramics. It is also a component of silicones, a name for various plastic substances often confused with silicon itself. Silicon is widely used in semiconductors because it has a lower reverse leakage current than the semiconductor Germanium, and because its native oxide is easily grown in a furnace and forms a better semiconductor/dielectric interface than almost all other material combinations.

Sounds good to me!

I remember ads in the early 80's that talked about building out the fiber optic system and how they said the fiber optics was made from one of the most abundant substances on earth-sand.

So free markets again expected the demand in the future and made adjustments in a timely fashion. Just as the early development of fiber optics was slow, as soon as prices started telling to use less expensive and potentially better results then the market shifted.

And lastly, if Carbon nanotube takes off as a substance for manufacturing and building this could be some of our carbon sinks we are looking for. Only food for thought...

P.S.: At EconLog, Arnold Kling thinks that Fiber Optic to the home will not happen but local transmitters will transmit the information to the house for the last mile of transmission. Either way copper is less likely to be used for data transmission in the long term basis. But for rural areas wi-fi and other wireless communication systems the distances are too short. So fiber still might be used in many locations.

P.P.S: De-Monetisation of Copper

Never mind the supposed ‘re-monetisation’ of gold, what about the de-monetisation of copper. The price of copper is now so high that the copper content of small denomination coins may now exceed their face value. Larry White points to the case of Korea, which is suffering from reverse seignorage:

The production cost of a W10 coin is about W40, W14 of that for copper and zinc alone.

Australian coins are 75-92% copper, although we wisely took smaller denomination coins out of circulation years ago.

Yes, we are going to transfer from good money to bad money. Seigniorage is the "Revenue or a profit taken from the minting of coins, usually the difference between the value of the bullion used and the face value of the coin." So this is true a reverse, but I was introduced to it as more of benefit derived from creating "new money" and not just the process of printing currencies. Because printing a currency in essence is making a product. If the product sells for less than its costs then it is not profitable.

More peak resource information...Copper!

Hat tip to "Division of Labor".
The point that is being made in the above blog is that since copper prices have risen by 57% this year resulting in the price of the raw commodity is greater than the face value of a copper penney. Just recently I was thinking the same thing, when the issue of peak oil came up. I remember for a short spell that the price of copper was greater than the price of a penny. Banks were also running of pennies as the US mint was transforming to the new penny.

I am sure some of my calculations were off but I saw that there was about 13 pennies to an once (100% copper/pre 62) and the value of the pennies were just over 12 cents per once.

So there are some obvious opportunities for arbitrage, as mentioned in the above link ,that coinstar could pursue. And thus transferring commodities that are unproductive to more productive uses. One economic theory that I learned in international finance is that bad money drives out good money everytime. Thus the good money is real copper that will replace worthless money. Though this is not to say that anything really changes since the value of money is derived by everyone willing to trade for this intermediary object.

If copper is to continue to be high priced then more quantities will come into the market and stabalize the prices, as in more mining, less use in coins, more conservation and lastly substitutes will be used whenever possible with less expensive materials.

Both articles below are interesting on the copper market including some history. But for now let me include one interesting quote:

Doing so is only worthwhile when copper sells on the commodities exchanges for at least $1.55 a pound, the threshold at which a pre-1982 penny surpasses its face value. Copper has remained above that price since July and peaked Dec. 27 at $2.28 a pound.

Links:
Bloomberg:Copper May Rise in London

Penny less than sum of parts

A Short History of Fiber Optics

Fiber Optics

Will fiber optics overtake copper in backbone?