It's a good time to be an owner of shares of a company like Freeport-McMoRan (NYSE:FCX). Even though they didn't have the best quarter on record, they are in the right business at the right time.

During a conference call last Tuesday to discuss second-quarter financial results, Freeport President and CEO Richard Adkerson spoke his mind about cost, production and global demand.

The CEO stressed that FCX believes that higher new mine construction costs and increased production costs for the mining industry in general "are going to be another barrier to the delays that major greenfields projects are facing in this industry. It's going to be in everybody's thinking."

Therefore, Freeport is striving to "come in earlier with brown fields expansions, with an eye on 'being able to profit from the overall situation that the industry is facing from a supply-development standpoint,' Adkerson emphasized to analysts.

"We think the world's going to use all the copper we can find and produce," he declared. FCX now has significant development activities underway to expand production volumes, extend mine lives, and develop large-scale underground ore bodies.

In addition to the projects now under way, the New Orleans-based mega-miner is reviewing its properties to evaluate potential for expansion of existing ore bodies.

To help accomplish this, Freeport has increased its exploration budget this year from $180 million to $240 million. That's a 33% increase and is directed precisely to the future of copper demand in the developing world.

Companies like Southern Copper (NYSE:PCU) whose yield is now a lofty 7.6%, also will be major beneficiaries of the supply and demand conundrum that is a part of the sheen on copper's future.

The Gold Report recently did an interview with newsletter writer and analyst Lawrence Roulston of Resource Opportunities.

In this wide-ranging interview, Roulston gives his thoughts on the outlook on the economy and what factors impact the gold market and all the other metals:

"TGR: What should our readers be thinking about in terms of the base metals, particularly copper?

LR: Copper is the biggest of the base metals, but in my mind is like all the other base metals, and I will make some general comments. As the developing world has developed, demand for base metals, oil, food and every commodity on the planet has been escalating at a pace that nobody thought possible.

So when you look at the base metal prices, most of them are up several times, 10 times in some cases, from where they were at the start of the decade. This reflects the fact that demand for the metals has been increasing much faster than the industry has been able to increase its production capacity.