Price for gas to increase in Newfoundland and Labrador

Houston, we have a problem...

Unlike the Apollo mission those many years ago, what we are witness to is a supply/demand market that needs a little oxygen, something it hasn't had in a long time...

Newfoundland and Labrador consumers will be subject to another increase at the pumps come this Thursday morning. Another 3.4 cents on a litre to be exact.

Stove oils are pointing down only slightly, with 13 days out of a possible 14 days measured. That could even be gone by the end of the day barring any divine intervention, not likely to happen with Easter gone!

Heating oils and diesels may in fact, show no appreciable change as a result of seeing early interruption last week.

Here's what's bugging me this time around though...

For a while now, I've been hearing refineries speak about shutting down for some needed winter maintenance ahead of the demand season for refining gasolines. They've been shut down for a while now, almost six weeks since I heard the first of them switch-over from distillate refining to gasolines.

That's an awfully long time considering some of the early turn-arounds I used to hear about some years back but, this time is more unusual than most.

While it's true they need some time to do their maintenance thing, should it be true that they should do it in the time that used to be set aside for the building of gasoline inventories? Because there is a drain on gasoline inventories at a time they used to build, consumers will have to pay higher pricing this coming summer as a result.

All the companies had to do was switch the time they did the maintenance thing, and we'll get to pay for it!

It's at that time of year as well, when they start on gasolines, that they build distillate inventories. Let's see what they do with those this summer and fall.

Regards for now,

George