Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to all our witnesses for being here.
My communities in northwestern British Columbia are struggling with the same issue right now. As Mr. Pryce and his colleagues will know, there's great interest in coal-bed methane in British Columbia, now washing over from Alberta, and the question has boiled down to risks versus benefits, at the local community level certainly: how much risk is incurred by the local community versus how much benefit they'll receive back, whether in jobs or future development?
I have to say I was rather neutral on the issue two years ago, but the education that I and some of my citizens have gone through over the last couple of years has put up a strong resistance.
Mr. Pryce will be aware of the Klappan project in northwestern British Columbia, a very significant resource, as well as the Telkwa fields and some others in British Columbia. The reason I'm prefacing my questions with this is because in his questions of options for the government and the regulators of the day...I'm curious as to where the citizens actually engage and have input as to whether something goes ahead.
My first question for Mr. Pryce is around the scope of the resource. I'm just looking over some of the research we've had done. I imagine you would describe this as a significant resource going ahead over the next 10 or 20 years, just in terms of volume, potential earnings, etc.