Number one, it is safe. Our company has been doing it for 12 years. The technology itself has been around for 60-plus years. It's immediate post-war technology. It's older than television.
We can argue this until the cows come home. I'm sure other people have different perspectives, but there is still, to date, in North America no proven case of hydraulic fracturing having gone up through fractures and contaminated ground water. Yes, as an industry, we recognize that there have been incidents in which fluids have gone up as a result of poor well integrity and caused damage. That is an area of focus for our sector.
Where we're going in the next five years is a very difficult question. We are looking at incremental improvements in dozens of ways in our inputs, whether those be through chemistry, base fluids, equipment, or supplies such as proppants. They are being hauled tremendous distances, so we're looking at improving our local sourcing of that material.
What else can I add to that?
Operationally we are looking at productivity gains from reconfiguring equipment to improve ergonomics. As development gets more frequent and intense, we are looking to get efficiencies in our labour and labour logistics.
Finally, on treatment design, we are looking at new fluids, more benign fluids, and at trying to improve the fluid effectiveness to try to achieve more with less.
Does that answer your question?