Thank you. If you allow me, I will answer in English.
With respect to carbon capture technology, Mr. Shaw has made some reference to this already, but there is technology existing for the capture of carbon dioxide from our upgrading components, which Mr. Carter has also referred to. With oil sands production we're talking about mining operations, producing raw bitumen, and then we have a secondary component called upgrading, where we add hydrogen, crack the materials, and make light synthetic crude oil that is sent to the markets in Canada and the U.S.
It's in those upgraders where we have the opportunity to capture the carbon dioxide in our hydrogen complex. Different operators have different models. I know Suncor and Syncrude both have their upgraders attached to their mines in Fort McMurray. In fact, Shell has its upgrader near Edmonton in Fort Saskatchewan. So we've actually separated the mine from the upgrader. Our upgrader is in Fort Saskatchewan just outside of Edmonton. If we capture the CO2 at our upgrader in Edmonton, it is in fact very close to sequestration points in central Alberta, the Pembina and Swan Hills oil fields, which are aging oil fields. There's an opportunity to capture the CO2, pipe it out, and inject it. However, the capture of the CO2 is very expensive. We would have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars for the infrastructure to capture it, and then hundreds of more millions of dollars for the pipelines to the fields where it could either be injected or sold to third parties for use in enhanced oil recovery. Clearly, although the technology exists, Shell is not going to implement this technology and put itself at a significant disadvantage to its competitors that have chosen not to, for example, for whatever good reasons.
With respect to this technology and the need for infrastructure, there are two solutions. One is to enable the technology through some partnership for the investment in the infrastructure--the pipelines from these upgrading hubs, whether it's Fort McMurray or Fort Saskatchewan, to the fields. So partnering on infrastructure is one.
Two, as the government goes forward and makes regulation with respect to greenhouse gases, it should consider what we would call market mechanisms in these regulations. The regulations need to be appropriate, but at the end, I think industry is preferable to what we call market mechanisms that would have emissions trading, and therefore reductions in CO2 could be considered as offsets. It's another way of funding or financing these kinds of investments.
We would look for a stable fiscal regime around greenhouse gases that would allow major investments. These are major investments as well. Without some incentive or regulation that's fair to all, industry won't take these on a voluntary basis. It will put us at a competitive disadvantage to our competition, which happens to be the imported crude to North America, as I mentioned. We're displacing imported crude, so we would be at a disadvantage to our competitors.