In mid-August, if your truck ran on gasoline instead of diesel, you were in for a shock.
Gasoline prices at the pump in Saskatchewan spiked 16 cents in a day. It must have felt like a kick in the teeth to anyone working (or more importantly, not working) in the patch.
The reason this time, as seen throughout much of the media, was that the shutdown of the 410,000 barrel per day BP refinery in Whiting, Indiana. Some pipes apparently had some holes in a 240,000 bpd portion of the facility.
As a result, we in Saskatchewan got hosed when hooking up the gas pump hose to the gas tank.
At least, that’s the story we’ve seen in every other media source, those whose editorial and financial resources are much greater than ours. They’ve been looking into this conundrum on a regular basis for years, and never seem to get an answer that makes sense. They might as well be looking for Jimmy Hoffa. He only disappeared 40 years ago in July 1975.
The odd thing is, in Saskatchewan, most of our gasoline is sourced from the Regina Co-op Refinery complex. Here’s an excerpt from our 2010 story on the Regina refinery: “The Regina complex provides fuel directly to Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and the eastern side of Alberta. Exchange agreements with other refiners allow CCRL to supply fuel to gas stations other than the Co-op and Tempo brands in this region and, in return, Co-op stations in British Columbia and the remainder of Alberta are supplied by other refiners. It’s a common practice in the industry across Canada, according to Bud Van Iderstine (then senior vice-president of refining for Federated Co-operatives Ltd.).”
But there’s always a reason for high gasoline prices. It’s summer driving season. A refinery had a maintenance outage (as if it’s the only refinery in North America, and obviously must be supplying our local pumps). A war broke out in the Middle East. The sun set. Gravity. Any other ideas?
Amazingly, when the price of crude oil goes up, gasoline goes up in lockstep. But when it comes down, oh, there’s a refinery outage.
Thus, a 16-cent hike in one day is hard to take. It might make sense if Saudi Arabia had just been invaded by Iran, or Israel bombed Iran, or Iran took a shot across the bow of an American aircraft carrier in the Strait of Hormuz. (Note the common thread here?) But in this case, Iran, with its Obama-approved nuclear deal in hand, is about to flood the global market with even more cheap crude.
Oilpatch workers, most probably didn’t mind paying a high price for gasoline if it meant a high paycheque. But when that paycheque is down substantially or not there at all, this is a bit much.
