Natural Resources committee  I'm not sure how Pembina arrived at its numbers. All I can do is tell you about our numbers at Syncrude that are measured. We target to reduce the water consumption, and there's a really simple reason for that, quite frankly. It costs money to store water. We have to build these

Natural Resources committee  That's from 2005 to 2006. It was on the way in 2004.

Natural Resources committee  Maybe I'll take a stab at that, and others will want to jump in, no doubt. Some of the things we've been doing for the last ten years we would want to continue doing, like the apprenticeship programs we have for training apprentices. We've been very successful in being able to h

Natural Resources committee  Okay. The other one would be that immigration is something that is important. At Syncrude, we've been fortunate in that we've been able to satisfy our hiring needs within Canada for the most part, but with the growth in the industry going forward, we see that immigration is goin

Natural Resources committee  I would say we are being responsible. The amount of money the oil sands industry in Alberta pays to the Government of Alberta in the form of royalties and what we pay in taxes, payroll taxes that go to both levels of government...that's responsibility.

Natural Resources committee  I think we may have answered this question earlier, unless I'm mistaking what you are saying.

Natural Resources committee  I think what I said, and I may be corrected, is that for things like sequestration we need some support from governments to kick-start that notion and to develop the technology, the transportation systems that are necessary, and get some mechanisms in place that make it advantage

Natural Resources committee  Let me respond. I think I said earlier on--maybe I wasn't very clear--that we had reduced our energy consumption per barrel since 1990 by about 17%. Going forward, we would expect that in the foreseeable future we're going to see that virtually double, and we'll come down by anot

Natural Resources committee  Maybe I'll have a go at answering that. The federal government already is helping in some ways. One example would be through the National Research Council. We do a lot of work with them. We do work with the universities. We do work with our own research institutions. We do work

Natural Resources committee  Well, part of the problem for our industry is that we're not price setters; we're price takers. We take whatever the price is in the world market. It's probably easy today to say the oil industry is doing well at $56 a barrel, or whatever it happened to trade at today. It's not

Natural Resources committee  Speaking from Syncrude's point of view, we don't have an interest in those. We're a joint venture company. Some of our owners actually do have projects that they're proposing to develop in the oil sands, but we don't have a direct interest in those. In fact, if anything, I could

Natural Resources committee  Thank you. What would it mean for Canada if we were to cease production of oil from the oil sands? Let me frame it that way, and I think that's where you're coming from with your question. This year, for the first time—I guess for the second year now—oil production from the oil

Natural Resources committee  Just to begin, and I'm sure my colleagues will want to answer as well, we have a very sophisticated water management system in our surface mines in the oil sands. To give you an example of that, at the Syncrude mine site our permit does not allow us to discharge water that has co

Natural Resources committee  I'd just like to add to that, just to elaborate a bit on Mr. Seeley's response. In Alberta, to get a permit application approval to have a surface mine in the oil sands, you have to submit a development and reclamation plan that describes the final land closure even before you'r

Natural Resources committee  Let me speak first. I know Rob will want to say something about what Shell and Albian have done, and I'm sure Mark will as well. What we have done at Syncrude is really focus on the processes that we have internally. We've spent $50 million a year on R and D since the inception