A Prescient Purchase for Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. (FCX)

Setting sail for the open seas
It’s why Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. (NYSE:FCX) has a unique opportunity to not only survive but also thrive, and while Plains Exploration will give it access to some immediate oil and gas plays, McMoran Exploration may just be the real jewel.

McMoRan is an ultra-deep-sea driller that’s looking to tap the huge reserves trapped beneath the Gulf of Mexico’s salt geology at depths as far down as 35,000 feet. If it can successfully navigate those depths — no small feat as even larger drillers such as Exxon Mobil Corporation (NYSE:XOM) have gotten faint with trying — it could have access to trillions of cubic feet of reserves.

McMoRan investors just voted this morning to approve the buyout, and it could not have come soon enough. While I’m of the mind there is a coming copper boom, there’s also a lot more risk in mining these days. Not that oil and gas drilling is risk-free, as the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and resulting drilling moratorium proved, but the potential rewards are so large here that Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. (NYSE:FCX) may have diversified itself at just the right time that we may come to think of it more as a drilling operation than as a miner.

With shares down 18% over the last six months, investors could be looking back wistfully on these prices and wishing they had gotten in before they turned into a gusher.

The article A Prescient Purchase for Freeport-McMoRan originally appeared on Fool.com.

Fool contributor Rich Duprey has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. (NYSE:FCX).

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