Natural Resources committee  We haven't received, to my knowledge, anyway, any from Chevron on a formal basis. We had ongoing discussions with their drilling team during the course of the Lona O-55 well and shortly thereafter. They assembled for that well the best expertise they had available within Chevron.

Natural Resources committee  No.

Natural Resources committee  It depends on the information the operators give us. If it contains proprietary information, we have to seek their permission to release it. We would certainly do that.

Natural Resources committee  That's correct, and where it's in place--and it's not in place for every operator, but we will certainly endeavour to see that it does become in place--it's not just an authority that you have to stop the work, it's actually a responsibility you have. If you see something that yo

Natural Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Tonks. What we would always want to see deployed or available, or being readily available to be deployed if required, was the best available technology. I think that's what this company, the Marine Well Containment Company, is moving toward, advancing the state of

Natural Resources committee  No, it wouldn't require a relief well. The problem is a relief well—not a problem, it's a fact--will take a long time to be successful. There has been a lot of discussion about drilling a relief well simultaneously with the original well. The problem there is that any time you st

Natural Resources committee  We've just concluded, as one of my colleagues mentioned earlier, a new set of drilling and production regulations that came into effect the first of January this year. We've reviewed those; they were obviously put in place prior to the incident in the Gulf of Mexico happening. We

Natural Resources committee  Not that I'm aware of. Had there been equipment available in Canada, or anywhere internationally, I think it would have been deployed. There was a huge influx of resource into the Gulf of Mexico to attempt to deal with that spill, from all over the place.

Natural Resources committee  The oil companies are required to submit to us demonstration of financial capability to deal with anything that might go wrong or occur with the well. In our regime it would be similar to what happened in the Gulf of Mexico. The operator has full responsibility for any costs asso

Natural Resources committee  I'm not aware of NORAD's overall activities related to offshore facilities, but Transport Canada has a requirement for security of marine assets. It conducts a regular audit of each of the installations to ensure they have appropriate security measures in place, both on the facil

Natural Resources committee  We make routine inspections and audits, but we don't have anybody permanently on any of the facilities. We deploy our staff on the basis of a risk analysis, so those areas or activities that we think might be higher risk than others get more interest and more oversight. If I can

Natural Resources committee  Actually, we haven't identified any shortcomings in the plans that have already been submitted. From the point of view of our production operations, we have a three-year cycle of operations authorizations. For example, in the case of the Hibernia field, its operations authorizati

Natural Resources committee  I must confess that I'm not totally up to date on what the coast guard has. For a number of years, just because the gentleman who was running it was a close personal friend of mine, the emergency response supervisor, we would socialize and I would see what they were doing as I vi

Natural Resources committee  I'm not absolutely certain, but I believe the coast guard appeared before this committee some time just before or after we appeared here in May.

Natural Resources committee  Yes, and I think ECRC may have been before the committee as well. I'm not absolutely sure of that. They have an annual field exercise that the operators conduct, but ECRC is involved in it. That happened in October--the synergy exercise. I know they're involved with Transport C