Natural Resources committee  Every exploration well creates about 400 jobs in Newfoundland and Labrador. If a discovery is found, that is thousands of jobs through the capital development phase and thousands through the operations phase. About 22,000 people in the province are directly and indirectly employed in the sector.

Natural Resources committee  The potential is to get to 50,000. Currently, it's over 21,000. I'd have to verify the number, but I think there's a little over 200,000 working population. That's definitely between 10% to 15%.

Natural Resources committee  It is for sure.

Natural Resources committee  It's a very highly specialized training to get offshore. A lot of training goes into the basic survival training course. There's continuous ongoing training and safety, and environment is paramount. There are a lot of engineers and years of training and continuous training, but also a lot of technical jobs right on down through the supply chain.

Natural Resources committee  Thank you for your question. With respect to Newfoundland and Labrador, oil and gas accounts for about 25% of our GDP. In my opening remarks, I mentioned that we represent about 460 members. About 15% of those come from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick actually, because when Newfoundland and Labrador is doing well in the industry, Atlantic Canada is doing well, as well as Alberta and Ontario when it comes to manufacturing jobs.

Natural Resources committee  Thank you, Chair. Thank you to the committee for allowing me to appear today. To begin my comments, I will provide brief details about Energy NL. We are an industry association representing approximately 460 companies and organizations involved in the energy sector. Our association has been involved in advocating for our members for 45 years now, and we just recently revised our vision, our mandate and our name to more accurately reflect the interests of our members and the evolving energy industry.