Environment committee  Yes, it does. What has happened in Weyburn, actually, although we are getting the carbon dioxide from North Dakota, it is an experiment to see how this works. The advantage with Weyburn is that we know the base information, and when we put the carbon dioxide in, we can see the ef

Environment committee  It reduces the viscosity and so on, but there are other ways actually. We'd love to talk more about that, and when we have an opportunity we'll be very happy to continue to do it.

Environment committee  There are studies in that area. There are some numbers that are available now. The ultimate effect is that you don't have to wait for 20 to 30 years. At least you can get projections of what could happen. You are right; the contamination of underground water is one of the issue

Environment committee  I'd like to add one or two quick points. With in situ, because there is no disturbance of the land, and so on, whatever emissions there are underground are not exposed to the surface. These are advantages. But I'd like to at least warn you against believing that in situ produc

Environment committee  Our department is working on two fronts. One is the technical front. We're trying to develop better technologies to clean the water, recycle the water, and generally use less water in the production of oil. On the coordination front, we have committees in NRCan from different are

Environment committee  I think this is an excellent question. We still have the legacy of what happened before, and even if we stopped today we still would have large tailings ponds to deal with. We have been working with this for a while now, and there are some technologies around that can mitigate th

Environment committee  There are about four or five. But the size of the dams is actually a point of pride for the engineers who built them.

Environment committee  It may not work this way exactly, because as new technologies come in, the number and size of the ponds will not be as big. The sooner we bring in new technologies, the better it will be for everybody. The fallback position for approvals from the province is the technology where

Environment committee  The technology, actually, in the old sense, in the extraction of the oil sands, made major strides up to the late 1990s, before the prices of everything went down. You could produce better oil for about $8 or $9. This is for production. Now it is close to $40, and it has nothing

Environment committee  That's true. One more thing to add is that in the river there is high flow and low flow, and even at low flow, so far, according to the Alberta government's water management, this is a reasonable and acceptable level of draw on the river.

Natural Resources committee  Actually, in moving from the surface to in situ, you avoid all the land disturbance, which is another advantage.

Natural Resources committee  It's not only easy but also in surface mining you recover over 90% of the bitumen and in situ you recover less than 40% because of the nature of--

Natural Resources committee  Exactly. There's no difference in that at all.

Natural Resources committee  Definitely. Except for one development that was developed by Alberta in collaboration with Canada a long time ago. It's called underground tunnels. They go underground and make a tunnel and then they drill from that tunnel to recover the oil; it goes down into that tunnel, then i

Natural Resources committee  The joke goes beyond that. You suck it and put it in your car and run the car. Yes, the cost is more expensive.