One of the basic principles of geoscience gathering and licensed concession-making that is common in all offshore jurisdictions—and Canada and Norway are no different—is that when a government gives licence and access to its resources, to its land, it gives an exclusive right to explore and develop for resource extraction. What does Canada get back in exchange? Obviously, on the successful discovery, it hopes to get jobs, revenue, taxes, and royalties, but even in the pursuit of those development projects—and there are many wells and many geoscience programs that are unsuccessful—what else can the country get from that concession, that exclusive right?
They can get the underlying geoscience. They can get the stories that are to be told. They get to plan how to open their offshore, how to progress it, and how to manage it. It is important to know that companies understand that globally, and they actively participate by providing that raw data. Our petroleum boards do collect data, but it's antiquated in both the style and frame by which they acquire it and in they way they make it available, to the extent that it's not really used.
In my mind, Norway has a tremendous advantage, in that it's created a business opportunity. It says, “It costs money to acquire and share data, so on a multi-client basis you can share as many companies' data as you can. You can make your own commercial relations with them to acquire that data, but we will provide the platform on which to acquire it.” Why is that? It's because Canada can get that for free, as Norway will, because that is in the terms and conditions for getting the licence. What they do is simply make a portal where, for a fee, they upload their data. It self-pays. They freely to do that, and in return Canada gets great insights into all the offshore area, while individual companies can use this as a platform to look at not only their own data but data of their neighbours and freely exchange, share, and trade data in other areas.