But whether BHP, Australia's largest industrial company, will be closer to ridding itself of the former Magma Copper Co by this time next week or just less exposed to a cyclical downturn in copper prices through partial rationalisation is less clear.

Rival copper producers, who have watched their own profits shrink in line with plummeting metal prices, will cheer loudest if BHP opts to mothball the whole operation.

"The expectation at the moment is that is flowing towards the view that operations will be mothballed," John Bugg, analyst for Macquarie Investment Management said.

This would elimate some 182,000 tonnes of copper from the world market and almost single-handedly reverse a forecast 200,000-tonne supply glutover the next two years.

Australia's equity investors also will be holding out for something drastic to reinstate BHP as the "Big Australian" industrial at a time when the stock market begins to look overweighted in high technology and media stocks.

BHP Managing Director Paul Anderson has promised to find a solution for Magma, which contributed about A$40 million in losses in the last quarter alone, and at least provide a progress report by Friday.

Before Anderson took up his post late last year, BHP had already written off two-thirds of Magma, which cost A$3.2 billion to buy in 1995.

But at ground level, signals from the Magma camp have been mixed.

The Robinson mine in Nevada, most-often tipped for closure due to high running costs, operated near its full capacity of 70,000 tonnes in the year just ended and continues to operate at that level. This is despite cash costs hovering around the current spot copper price of US$0.66 cents.

Moreover, even if BHP decided to place Robinson on "care andmaintenance" it could face a long-term commitment to maintain the local payroll, partly muting any benefit to the bottom line.

In neighbouring Arizona, where BHP's giant San Manuel smelter and refinery rely on feed from BHP's U.S. mines to operate at optimum rates, only the San Manuel mine is running at peak performance.

The nearby Superior mine stopped operating in mid-1996 and most of the Pinto Valley mine has been idle for more than a year.

BHP in May invested US$54 million to overhaul the furnace component of the smelter and is unlikely to follow up on this expenditure by operating the plant at a reduced level, or shutting it down completely.

"It is possible-to-probable that more mines will go, but the smelter is too much of an asset," said Robert Nachum, managing director of Minalysis in Adelaide.

Already about a third of the San Manuel smelter's time is spent toll smelting other miners' concentrates for a fee. As more mines in North America mature and close, toll smelting work will only becomemore competitive.

Longer term -- and shipping rates permitting -- BHP could divert more of its concentrates from its Escondida, Chile, and Ok Tedi, Papua New Guinea, mines to San Manuel, but for now most of that tonnage is locked up in sales to smelting companis in Asia and Europe.

There also has been speculation that Arizona rival Phelps Dodge Co might purchase the smelter and integrate it into its own operations in the region.