Thank you very much.
I'm Kevin Kelly, president of CEP Local 2121, and I work as a central control room operator on the Hibernia platform. I've worked at Hibernia for the last 13 years.
CEP Local 2121 feels that establishing search and rescue operations in St. John's is much needed in order to facilitate shorter response times in the case of a helicopter emergency. We feel that with exploration and the development of new fields such as Hebron and Orphan Basin, the risks are substantially increased due to the increased amount of travel.
If you were to poll our members, the majority would say that the travel to and from the offshore installations is one of the most dangerous parts of the job. This was brought to light on March 12, 2009, with the loss of Cougar Flight 491. We hope that an incident such as this is never repeated.
We feel that a dedicated search and rescue operation stationed in St. John's is essential to ensure that offshore workers and their families can feel as safe as is reasonably practical when they travel to and from their place of work.
I would now like to hand things over to Brian Murphy, the vice-president of Terra Nova FPSO. Brian will give you some information on the offshore.