Tuesday, September 05, 2017

Price changes for Thursday, September 7, 2017


Hi to all,

Sorry for not keeping everyone up to date as I wished last week, and thanks to those who sent their condolences or visited us at the untimely passing of my Mother. I will remember your kindness a long time!



All the data is now in for this week and is still pretty close to what I initially had yesterday. Here’s the new projections for this week:



*Heating and stove oils show an increase of 4.2 cents a litre.

*Diesel shows an added 4.5 cents a litre, and...

*Gasoline shows an added 14.1 cents a litre.



A couple of things here.



First off, gasoline is starting to show a retreat as of today. The markets show for day one of the next pricing session gas dropping by 2.5 cents a litre, but there’s still six days to go, so I fully expect to see further drops as refineries start to re-enter production from Hurricane Harvey’s after-effects.



Secondly, all this is a repeat of what happened during the Katrina and Rita events of 2005. The failure of government to ensure the security of supply to the Canadian economy in ensuring adequate inventory keeping of refined product that meets our needs in an emergency, along with a moratorium on refinery closures are two important aspects. The third thing the government of Canada needs to do is re-visit the Competition Act to ensure companies cannot share supply between each other that has cost in refinery capacity, let alone jobs.



Lastly, while other centres like Ottawa increased in prices by 31 cents a litre and Toronto by 23 cents in a competitive market, the government needs to remind companies that we have the Emergencies Act that I think can be used to ensure consumers do not get gouged at a time that consumers would deem to be a crisis, in this case where prices went far out of line from what was the actual.



We cannot avoid the actualities of the markets, but fortunately I think, we have a mechanism in place to protect consumers somewhat when that emergency comes about.



That’s it for this week!



Regards,



George Murphy

Twitter @GeorgeMurphyOil

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