Subcommittee on Oil and Gas and Other Energy Prices committee  Well, yes, higher prices cause people to expend more trying to find more oil. Yes, they do. Unfortunately, the cost of anything real today.... If you want anything real, such as a piece of steel or copper—whatever, real—we've had exponential inflation in real things, so the cost of finding these things has gone up almost exponentially.

Subcommittee on Oil and Gas and Other Energy Prices committee  I would say that obviously you have the power to do whatever you want in the country. You create the Competition Bureau; you can enforce it or not, if you want to. All the data is available. The data on refining and marketing is as simple as A, B, C, right? You pay x; the price at the pump is this; the tax is that.

Subcommittee on Oil and Gas and Other Energy Prices committee  Thank you for the question. As I've said, I believe there's a paper market and a real market. I think that the real market is a truer market. It's interesting. I think someone mentioned that the price of oil was up $2 today and they didn't know why. The reason is that we are in so fine a balance between supply and demand, we are right there.

Subcommittee on Oil and Gas and Other Energy Prices committee  There's rarely delivery of a commodity. So money forces can make prices do what they want them to do, and very often the physical market follows that price, because that price is the one quoted in the paper every day. But there rarely is a trade in commodities. I would point out—and most people wouldn't be aware of this—that the latest example of a company having a problem in the commodity market is a company called SemGroup.

Subcommittee on Oil and Gas and Other Energy Prices committee  No. I think the commodity markets might be very poorly regulated. That's the paper market. Then there's there real world where oil is produced, consumed, and purchased.

Subcommittee on Oil and Gas and Other Energy Prices committee  Yes, and I already called it the comedy exchange. I think there are too many institutions that force the price around.

Subcommittee on Oil and Gas and Other Energy Prices committee  I think what Mr. Diwan has said is incredibly important, certainly for us as Canadians. We know what the tar sands cost to produce. It's not $80; it's very expensive. We're not going to get any further production of the tar sands with $80 oil. Nothing will go forward. That tells us what it costs to produce a marginal barrel of oil.

Subcommittee on Oil and Gas and Other Energy Prices committee  I want to reiterate that there are paper markets and there are real markets, and the commodity exchanges are a paper market.

Subcommittee on Oil and Gas and Other Energy Prices committee  I'd like to make two points. As you realize, I believe we have an oil problem in the world. It's because of something called depletion. When you start production, a well automatically depletes because the pressure depletes. Your production goes down. You're on a treadmill here, where you have to spend a lot of money just to keep production up.

Subcommittee on Oil and Gas and Other Energy Prices committee  Mr. Stanton, it is my belief that the commodity markets are not well regulated. I would not believe that report. We have seen so many examples. All of us have seen them. We saw Amaranth. We saw the SemGroup recently blow up and lose $3 billion. How much did you have invested to lose $3 billion?

Subcommittee on Oil and Gas and Other Energy Prices committee  I'm no authority on the Competition Bureau. I hope you don't think I'm sticking my head in the sand, but I've been around almost as long as all of you people, and I keep hearing about reviews of gasoline pricing in committees in the U.S. and in Canada year after year. Every time the price goes up, some committee reviews it, and every time there seems to be no evidence.

Subcommittee on Oil and Gas and Other Energy Prices committee  Maybe I'll try to answer the question about Chicoutimi. As I reflected when coming down here, in my life I was the CEO of a company called Canadian Turbo, which was in the business of refining oil and had 300 gasoline stations in western Canada. I thought it was the worst business in the world.

Subcommittee on Oil and Gas and Other Energy Prices committee  I have a comment on both questions. I do have some answers about Canadian participation. I've already mentioned that Amaranth was involved in the natural gas market to a very large extent. I've mentioned that a major Canadian bank was involved in natural gas derivatives to a very major extent.

Subcommittee on Oil and Gas and Other Energy Prices committee  Thank you very much. I look forward to the opportunity of presenting our views to the committee. We have a presentation that I think each of you has, and I will briefly go to that. We have two views on this topic. One is that we think that fundamentally the price of oil is going up because of the Hubbert peak oil thesis, which I will discuss.