I can speak for Nexen.
When were on a mission in the Maghrib in North Africa, one of the things that surprised us was how much durum market was being lost to the Americans. When we went around and talked to people, we asked why we were unable to compete. Under the bilateral agreements with several of the countries, because there's a trade advantage and a certain percentage of reduced tariffs as a result of these bilaterals with the U.S., Canadian durum finds it very difficult to find its way into what used to be mainly a market that was exclusive to Canadian durum because Canadian durum was superior. It could be that Canadian durum finds its way there through the United States.
Having said that, I think these bilaterals, it would seem to me, would be very simple to do. I think we have boilerplate agreements that you can modify very quickly, but we're just not flexible enough, and when it comes to trade and trade relations or how we support our companies, we don't move as quickly as the Chinese or the French or many other countries.
I have another good example, and I use it with some trepidation because it's our own company. Nexen has been in Yemen since 1993. We've produced a billion barrels of oil. Current levels are $50, but if you averaged it at maybe $35, that's $35 billion worth of value that we've produced in a very small country. We're about 30% of the GDP of the country.
We've been asking the federal government for 10 years to have a presence in Yemen. We have 1,000 employees. Hundreds of them--Ted, you would know about this, because you fly with many of them out of Calgary. First, there's no direct air link. There's no federal government embassy; there's no representation, even though this country has had an embassy in Canada for the past eight or ten years. It's these kinds of things that are taken by the Yemeni as a lack of interest by the government, as well as the fact that no ministers travel there or show interest.
I don't think we realize how we're perceived in this part of the world. What we say we're too busy to do is perceived by them as, at best, ignoring them and at worst as insulting them. I think this is a real issue. Maybe travelling with some of the trade missions to these parts of the world and even holding meetings could be a very useful part of the work of the committee.