I think what we don't have right now as a country is a national energy strategy. There is an absence. What I mean by that is that it's as if the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.
If all of a sudden we became number two in the world, after Saudi Arabia, with proven reserves, and became an oil powerhouse, how would we use that status to maximize economic benefits? The larger question, and I'm not talking just about this plant making a profit, is how, as a country, we maximize.
If I have an undisputed study that says that if I take raw bitumen and don't upgrade it.... I'm not talking about already refined products. I'm talking about not even separating the sand from the bitumen, which is the first upgrading. If I export 400,000 barrels of oil a day, that's 18,000 jobs. These are not trickle-down jobs. They are direct, well-paid jobs. We're talking about jobs that pay $40,000, $50,000, and $60,000. People who earn that pay taxes and spend money and so on and so forth. What am I doing? The raw bitumen is destined for the refinery capacity that was built on the gulf coast of the United States, which we want to feed. That's where it's going.
So what are we doing? We have a resource, and we're going to create the jobs elsewhere. I'm not saying that we're not going to make any money by selling this natural resource, the raw bitumen. I agree, but we're not maximizing.
When it comes to refining capacity, be careful. If we're not careful, if we don't do the right thing, we're going to close some of the refineries that we have presently.