For us, the important thing is to move up the value ladder here in Canada. Frankly, we're skeptical of the arguments that have been made by industry, which you've just heard repeated today, that the construction of pipelines and access to tidewater will automatically give us a price lift. That's based on a whole bunch of unproven assumptions.
I've sat through a lot of committee hearings like this and listened to a lot of presentations over the last 10 years, and what strikes me is that a lot of the arguments that are being made now by industry are the same arguments that were being made by industry before the price of oil collapsed. There doesn't seem to be a recognition that the global oil market has fundamentally changed and that this change has implications for the way forward for our industry here.
The reality is that even if we get access to tidewater there is a global oversupply of oil of about two million barrels per day. Getting access to tidewater is not going to change that situation. It'll just make it worse. Adding to the glut doesn't end the glut; it makes it worse.
For all the reasons I spoke of in my presentation, we don't see and I think a lot of other observers don't see any change in this fundamental situation. Going forward, we're looking at a lower-for-longer situation in terms of oil prices, so betting on a pipeline right now.... I know it's the thing that people say right now, and it's the thing that people have been saying for five years, but the world has changed, and we need a new framework to look at this industry going forward.
For us, the direction seems to be moving away from oil to be developed as a fuel. The real question is not about how we can stop that global trend, because it's out of our control. The question the policy-makers should be asking is, with these global trends, how can we prosper? We think that using the resources we have to fill new market niches, perhaps for something other than fuel, is the way forward. Manufacturing petroleum into other kinds of goods will create jobs here and actually deal with the world as it is, not with the world the way we want it to be.