The short answer is yes.
As to direct comparison, that's the answer I've been provided, because naturally I've asked the same thing. About four months ago I put together a small team of engineers. I asked them to provide me with the updated economics and technical considerations of a subsea line from Newfoundland and Labrador to New Brunswick. I wanted them to give me the feasibility of it, high-level. They came back and told me it was feasible, and gave me the research. In northeastern and northwestern Europe there's a predominance of these types of lines, as there is in Australia. Connecting Australia and Tasmania is a line called Basslink.
So I asked them if it looked reasonable in the preliminary, and when they said yes, I asked for some numbers on how much it cost. They numbers they provided me with came within a window such that, from a commercial engineering perspective, I wanted to pursue this further. I asked this team of engineers to go to Europe and investigate it further. They visited some of the key engineering firms as well as some of the big projects. NorNed is a good example, as I mentioned; it's connecting Norway and the Netherlands.
The team came back with some interesting results. The Europeans think differently from Canadians with respect to this. I find the Americans actually a lot more aggressive than we are as well. The Europeans are doing this all the time. They think long term. They think infrastructure investment. Their response was, “Here are the numbers, let me look at what you have, this looks interesting—we'll come over next month and let's start.”
All of that said, from what they brought back I have enough information that has continued to show that this is a viable alternative. So before I can answer your questions directly, I will tell you that, as I mentioned, we've hired three engineering firms. One of those, a large Norwegian firm with engineering expertise, is to come over and—