Along with today's release from the SPR, the White House announced that it would authorize the use of the Defense Production Act for green metals. That will help cut through red tape and get projects underway.
Earlier today, Goldman Sachs analyst Nicholas Snowden was talking in Santiago, Chile and sounding the alarm bells about a looming copper shortage.
He said that at some point the supply shortage "becomes so compelling that you can't sit on the sidelines and watch prices continue to rise."
He noted that trading volumes had dried up recently because of the madness in nickel, something he suspected will reverse soon.
Copper "is under priced and cannot remain at $10,000 per ton or we're going to run out of copper by the middle of this year," he said. "We have to reprice higher and it has to come extremely soon."