The first co-op that I spoke of, south of Calgary, had a pipeline going through the area that actually exported gas to California. The local farmers wanted to know why, if we're exporting Alberta gas, they couldn't have access to it. Some of the people who actually worked for the companies and had some experience in pipeline construction got together and said that if they could get a contract with a company that would buy their gas, they could distribute it to the people in the area. It took a while, but they were able to get it started. In fact, at that time, some of those original people had to put up personal guarantees. For example, on a $10,000 project one of them put up a $5,000 personal guarantee to get money to get that started.
After the first one got started, their neighbours would say, hey, you guys got gas and we want it too. They'd go to them for advice and over the first eight or nine years they formed up to about 25 co-ops basically in southern Alberta, mainly in the Calgary east area. They formed small co-ops but for a lot of them, when they went to the government, the latter would say that's too big an area and that they couldn't service it. So their franchise area was cut in half from what they were applying for. It took time to get even the government on board, but eventually there were enough of them going that they said it looked viable and they'd help.