Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It's a great pleasure to be here.
Mr. Stringham and I will be splitting the time. It's partly because Mr. Stringham, as an engineer with an MBA, spent a significant part of this career working for Syncrude. He has personal experience that I think will be invaluable to the members prior to their trip to the north.
We have sent you written material, and we're not going to go through that. We'll spare you the PowerPoint presentations, but we did circulate those, and we will be referring to some of the charts as we go through them.
We're delighted to be here.
Mr. Chairman, my understanding is that the committee would like us to focus on the economic aspects, but we're obviously quite prepared and would be delighted to talk about any part of the operation you would find useful.
Mr. Cullen, if you'd like, we can even answer your water question. But I guess I should wait until you ask it.
In the first place, I think it is important to put the oil sands story into context. It is part, and only part, of a much larger industry.
This year we expect to see the industry invest about $47 billion in Canada. Payments directly to governments, which Mr. Stringham will talk about to some degree of detail, will be about $27 billion. We represent about 25% of the private sector investment and about 30% of the value on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Total employment across all the provinces and territories approaches half a million Canadians.
But on those numbers, I think it's important to understand that of the $47 billion, $11 billion to $12 billion is in the oil sands. There is a very robust and conventional oil and gas industry in western Canada that will invest somewhere in the area of $30 billion to $35 billion a year.
When you talk about the oil sands, I think it's important to keep in context that the energy economy is far more than that. We've given you a chart that shows where the money is being spent.
The other fundamental that's important to understand about our industry is that people always refer to west Texas crude. Over the last year or so, you've heard numbers of $50 to $70. Fifty percent of our production here in Canada is heavy oil or super heavy oil, which is bitumen, and receives half or less than half of the prices of west Texas intermediate.
Certainly, Mr. Trost is aware of the differential issues in the heavy oil. As we go through some of this conversation, I think it's important to remember that not all oil is created equally.
To give you an idea, over the past year, revenue in the industry has approached $100 billion. But where does the money go? Approximately 45% of it is re-invested in capital that goes directly back into Canada, and we'll talk a little about where that shows up. Twenty-two percent of it is operating costs; that refers to those hundreds of thousands of Canadians who are working. Twenty-nine percent goes to royalties and taxes, including land sales, which is an important factor, and about 4% is returned to the public in terms of distribution to shareholders, unit holders, and other forums.
As you can see, Mr. Chairman, it is a very big part of the economy. Mr. Stringham will touch on a number of the specific aspects, and then I'll close.