London Metal Exchange three month copper prices were feeling no immediate effects of the suspension of operations at BHP Billiton’s Olympic Dam copper smelter, trading at 6,670 US dollars a tonne overnight.

A tight copper market has been driven by supply concerns this year. Operations at the smelter were stopped following the death of a BHP Billiton employee following an accident during maintenance on December 12.

A Dow Jones report said significant production losses were not expected.

Expectations of a lower US dollar, increased crude oil prices and rising US inflation have seen gold futures rising.

Comex February gold is up $1.70 to $818.80 an ounce, while the Chicago Board of Trade price rose $2.10 to $819.40 overnight.

Closer to home, Papua New Guinea and Australian goldminer Lihir Gold Ltd’s 2007 production forecast has been reduced by seven per cent to 700,000 ounces. In a statement on December 13 the company said its “operational performance had continued to build on the strong improvements implemented over the past two years, with record material movements and autoclave throughputs in the current year.”

Below-plan ore grades, attributed to the plant’s primary crusher requiring unplanned maintenance and restricted mill throughput due to ore being harder than expected, and a breakdown at a recently commissioned oxygen plant are at the root of the problem.

However, Lihir CEO Arthur Hood said despite the temporary setbacks the company would be positioned for strong improvement in operating cash flows in 2008 and beyond, due to “the improved operational performance, together with the expansion projects being planned and the elimination of all hedging earlier this year”.

In other metals news March silver was down four cents to 14.825 on Comex and down four cents to 14.834 on CBOT overnight.

Zinc, the year’s weakest performing base metal was up $US30 to $2459 a tonne, aluminium also fell, down $4 to 2456 a tonne, nickel dropped $500 to $26,200 a tonne and tin remained unchanged at $16,700 a tonne.