We were appreciative of the Bank of Canada's efforts. We're appreciative of their interest rate policy and we're appreciative of their liquidity. The federal government moved quite quickly, which we were pleased to see, in terms of unleashing the tools that were deployed in 2008 and 2009, which was encouraging. I think we've seen some of that liquidity reflected in terms of the banks' balance sheets, if you will, and their willingness to extend liquidity in some instances.
In terms of the oil and gas industry, there's a need for a little more of a focused approach. One piece that was quite helpful from a focused perspective was on April 17, when the federal government announced support for Export Development Canada and the Business Development Bank of Canada to provide liquidity for companies.
Within that, there was support for a subset of oil and gas companies that helps with respect to the way that banks lend to them, notably in the reserve-based lending side of things. While the details have yet to be finalized on what that looks like on the ground, we expect that it probably helps somewhere between 20 to 30 companies—small companies, largely—maintain lines of credit so they can borrow against what's a decreased valuation for their companies.
What we haven't seen yet is extended credit for some of the mid-size to larger companies that don't use a reserve-based approach, somewhere between 75,000 and above barrels per day. While not all of them need this, because certainly some of the larger companies have had the banks extend some of their liquidity facilities, some still do need it, and that's where the gap remains.
Our recommendation is for the government to enable industry-specific liquidity that is targeted to that mid-size to large company focus, so that they can access those credit facilities in the event that they need them. They might not actually need them, but having access to them is absolutely critical. We don't know how long we'll be in this position. We don't know what our industry faces over the next year to two years, and having access to that credit would be very important.
Now, of course, we also recognize that we need to be looking at this as liquidity of last resort. There have to be contingencies on the funding. It just can't be that type of liquidity that companies would like to get. Limitations on dividends, limitations on share buybacks and limitations on senior compensation, those are all reasonable—