CODELCO Ontology Method (Open Science Replication Container)

Copper prices are often treated as reports on global economic conditions. Yet those prices also emerge from supply-side organizations whose decisions are shaped by law, finance, politics, engineering and time. This article asks what becomes visible when one major copper producer is examined not simply as a commercial firm or an instrument of the state, but as an institution operating through divided authority and competing demands. The analysis examines two deliberately different Codelco episodes: the cessation and transition of the Ventanas smelter, and the company’s 2022–2024 reinvestment arrangement with the Chilean state. Ventanas reveals the physical, legal and human design of adjustment: the distinction between deciding to cease smelting and determining how cessation occurs, which functions remain, and where environmental, employment, industrial and financial consequences fall. The reinvestment arrangement reveals a financial and intertemporal problem involving retained earnings, fiscal transfers, borrowing, capitalization and future productive capacity. The article develops the concept of allocation of adjustment: how institutions structure the selection among feasible responses to pressure and distribute the resulting consequences across actors and time. Neither episode establishes that Codelco rejects commercial optimization, materially changes global copper supply or affects copper prices. Instead, the article shows why interpreting Doctor Copper may ultimately require attention not only to market fundamentals, but also to the institutional processes through which major producers absorb, postpone and redistribute adjustment.