This comes as Indonesia on January 12 introduced rules restricting copper concentrate exports in a bid to boost its domestic downstream smelting industry.
Freeport had said the suspension of the exports would require the Grasberg mine to slash output by around 70 million pounds of copper per month.
It also said that due to limited storage, it would need to cut output to about 40 percent of capacity if it did not get an export permit by mid-February.
President of Bradford Research Charles Bradford told CNBC on Tuesday despite concerns over copper supplies, what was happening in Chile and Indonesia were situations that can be humanly-controlled.
“You can’t count on these things continuing. It was like the run-up in coal price earlier last year when the Chinese cut back the operating days (at coal boilers); the price ran up…China decided it was too much, put back the extra days, price is (back down), it happens quickly,” he said.
