Price changes for Thursday, January 29, 2015

Hi to all,

It's been a rough couple of weeks, but I hope it's coming back to some form of normalcy now! It’s true what they say here in the province about coming in three’s too.

Here's what I have for price changes this week, all compliments of the Bank of Canada with its surprise change of rates that kicked the crap out of the Canadian dollar this past week:

Heating and stove oils show an increase of 1.22 cents a litre.
Diesel shows an added 1.7 cents a litre to come, and...
Gasoline shows an added 1.5 cents a litre at the pumps.

Keep in mind the winter blending of heating and diesel fuels that may throw off those numbers a little!
With the Bank of Canada's drop of interest rates last week, the Canadian dollar lost a full four cents against the US greenback. That cost Canadian consumers a rough 1.5 cents a litre at the pumps for all fuels I measure. The fact that this was a surprise move by the bank did not go by un-noticed, and the markets soon reacted. While it may make some of our exports a little cheaper, especially for raw resources, it also makes anything from outside the country, or based on outside pricing, susceptible to a change in prices. In this case, with fuels and oil being priced in the US, it's going to cost you a little more to buy them.
Hence, price increases to commodities like gas and heating oils.

By the way, did you happen to notice?...
While Costco still sold gasoline at a rough 87 cents a litre this past week, others like Irving and Ultramar in the St. John's northeast area only dropped prices in the area by the slimmest of margins. All retailers of fuel products in the province by the way, were recipients of a new allowable margin as set by the Public Utilities Board last week. New margins now sit at an "allowable" of close to 18.5 cents on any litre of fuel, rather than the previous 14.8 cents.

I'll be looking at that "allowable" process in the coming weeks to see if we can combat that, or at least have a fair shot at any hearing process that allowed this to happen!

That's it for this week!

Regards,

George Murphy

Twitter @GeorgeMurphyMHA