Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) The first question comes from the line of Andrew Fairbanks – Bank of America.
Andrew Fairbanks – Bank of America
I had a question on the financing slide on page ten. If you look at the total capital expenditures over the period of $12.5 billion how much of the Ford Hills project is included in that number at this point if anything?
Richard Bird
There is about $2 billion in there for Ford Hills and that is right at the back end of the five-year period. So we are still carrying an assumption of in-service in 2012 pending further guidance from the sponsors.
Andrew Fairbanks – Bank of America
As you think about that funding requirement should Ford Hills slip back to the second part of the decade would you think there is a high probability of other projects coming in to absorb that magnitude of capital need or would that just be a funding benefit where there would be just less debt and equity funding requirements in 2010 through 2012?
Pat Daniel
We are working on a number of other alternatives right now and I think it is fair to say we would expect in combination of other oil opportunities or some of the gas proposals we are working on that we would throw that in. It is hard to be very specific with you right now but we do have a number of things on the go.
Operator
The next question comes from Andrew Kuske - Credit Suisse.
Andrew Kuske - Credit Suisse
To what extent are you seeing productivity improvement for labor within Alberta and then to what extent is that giving you the ability to come in under budget on some of your projects and therefore open up some headroom on your financing?
Pat Daniel
Actually, to a very significant extent we are seeing improvements in productivity. I will speak primarily to pipeline construction productivity and I think it is fair to say the general principles I will refer to are applying to up stream construction as well in the oil sands. To give you a measure of that we have seen over a 3-4 times improvement in the well reject rate associated with pipeline construction which is one of the key measures that we use on productivity in pipeline construction. That has been very significant so we are seeing very significant improvements in productivity from a year ago when we didn’t have the kind of tightness that had started to develop in the labor market.
- To read the full transcript on Seeking Alpha, click here »
