I referred earlier to all the documentation and all the plans and procedures that companies have to have in place. I think there were two questions, and I'll answer the second one first.
The question was whether companies do all the work they should to prepare for emergencies that happen and whether there is some sort of cost analysis. We don't make any assessment of what it costs a company to be prepared. We do insist that they be prepared and that they demonstrate to us, through submission of detailed plans and procedures, that they are prepared to deal with any and all emergencies that arise. I refer to the contingency plans, emergency response plans, and oil spill plans; all of those are reviewed in detail by our experts and by experts in other agencies that we deal with.
With respect to the scenario of dealing with a large spill, you may recall that I referred to a three-tiered response. The tier one response would be for a small spill of less than 100 barrels. A small spill of this type can be adequately dealt with by equipment that is always available on site, and supply vessels are on the actual production installations. A tier two response would typically be capable of dealing with a spill of 100,000 barrels or less. Such a spill would be dealt with using resources that are available in Newfoundland alone. A tier three response, which is anything larger than 100,000 barrels or so, would likely require national and perhaps international resources. It would be similar to what was done in Macondo.
I think the one message I'd like to leave with you is that while the traditional spill response is still appropriate and still important, there is much more focus on prevention of accidents. In the event that an accident happens, we will be looking at the containment effort that was successful with Macondo to see how that can be used in our own area, if in fact we have a situation in which it is required.