Freeport-McMoRan's Adkerson comment on gold, copper production

Freeport-McMoran Copper & Gold Inc. Chief Financial Officer Richard Adkerson comments on the company's gold and copper production and its financial expectations. Adkerson spoke in a television interview with Bloomberg News from New Orleans.

On the company's financial expectations:

``We were in a very positive part of our ore body this year. We moved some volumes forward for the time being, we're sticking with our original estimates for the year, but we'll try to beat them during the second half.''

On whether the company is worried about flooding the market:

``We say we would like to do so much that we could adversely affect the market. For our product, we sell copper concentrates, there's a shortage around the world. China, for example, is now the world's largest consumer of copper and so we have ready markets for all the products that we can produce.''

On its Indonesia mine:

``The interesting thing about our mine is that it is now fully developed for a number of years, out until 2014. We have already spent the money to develop the mine. Now we're in the position of mining the ore body, generating cash flow so we have the opportunity to provide returns for our shareholders.''

On expectations for the second half of the year:

``We certainly are seeing some positive signs in the United States. And copper, our principal commodity, is the commodity most closely correlated with economic growth. We feel inevitably economies will recover and undeveloped countries like China and Eastern Europe will develop and there will be a great copper demand for that.'' (Bloomberg)