Decisions made by Alberta and Ottawa are affecting the viability of upgrading projects in two ways. First, the rapid pace of development means that so many companies are competing for skilled labour that it's driving the cost up, so only the cheaper extraction projects are viable. So the pace is affecting the viability.
The other thing is that building pipelines to attach the bitumen market to the American market is designed to drive up the price of oil, which sounds like a good thing, but a higher price of oil actually means that the feedstock that's necessary to make our refineries and upgraders run is more expensive. Our competitive advantage on the upgrading side has been access to relatively inexpensive feedstock. So if you drive the price that we get for our bitumen up, which is the explicit goal of these export pipelines, then we're actually undermining the viability of upgraders.
Does that make sense?