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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