Tuesday, May 05, 2015

Price changes for Thursday, May 7th, 2015

Hello everyone,

Here's what I have for this week's price changes:

Heating/stove oils to increase by 1.6 cents a litre.
Diesel to increase by 2.0 cents a litre, and...
Gasoline to increase by 1.6 cents a litre.


With oil prices increasing, refined commodity prices have also been rising. Anticipated builds to inventories are slowing somewhat and may be reflective of the slowdown in US domestic production being added, or it may be a sign that demand for gasoline and related products is picking up again.

Chinese demand still remains weak amongst emerging nations. With the latest news on lower than expected manufacturing data, it has to be a disappointment for those nations hoping to export there. China remains almost shut out for the time being as a potential market to pick up any excess of supply out there.

Finally, look here in the coming days as government has announced it will put taxes back on your heat and light bill. I will be posting a petition for you all to sign and have others sign as well as we are again back to the drawing board when it comes to having the tax off heat. It is, I feel, an important issue for everyone from seniors to those on lower incomes. Simple fact of the matter is that this is just as important to me to not have a tax on heat as much as there's no tax on food!

I hope you will help me in this quest!

Regards,

George
Twitter @GeorgeMurphyMHA

2 comments:

nyi said...

George ... can you please explain why we only saw lower prices at the pumps for a short period of time? It doesn't make sense why prices started to climb even when oil is in the 55-60 dollar range. Now if it happens to go up a little, fuel prices get impacted immediately. Again, why are we not seeing more sustained price breaks at the pump? Thanks

George said...

Just seeing this, so my apologies for getting back so late!

Refined products are traded separately from oil. That's why we saw refined products sink somewhat against oil. Most of the break we received also happened when the Canadian dollar slowed in it's decline against the US dollar. There's a big difference when you factor the currencies in the mix. A US gallon of product cost completely different with a rise or fall in the Canadian buck against its US counterpart, and even more noticeable the difference when you see strong growth in the US dollar, like we have recently.

Hope this helps?

George