Sneh Seetal, a spokesperson for Suncor, Petro Canada’s parent company that supplies the gas, said there are shortages across Western Canada and the Interior of B.C. because of an unplanned unit outage at the Edmonton refinery, which has slowed production of both diesel and gasoline.
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“The extent and length of which Suncor’s production problem continues will ultimately affect every station from Thunder Bay all the way back to the B.C. coast”.
Petro-Canada, which is supplied by Suncor, is trying to bring in more fuel from its own network as well as third party suppliers.
Suncor has been prioritizing distribution of their remaining supply to so-called “critical locations”, such as towns and villages that only have one gas station.
A gasoline shortage in western Canada is pushing up prices.
The fire in Fort McMurray has reached Wood Buffalo, Alberta, the Kelowna station’s supplier.
Prices at pumps elsewhere in the city have gone up between five to eight cents, with some stations showing gas at $1.11/ litre. “We’re doing everything we possibly can to reduce the impact”, she said.
The price increase is more related to two major refineries in the U.S. Midwest also being knocked out and record demand down south, but the Suncor outage isn’t helping, he said. “If you have a shortage in the system it’ll keep prices up artificially”, said McTeague.
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Seetal said it was hard to say when supplies would return to normal but that Suncor is working to restore the refinery and restart its oilsands operations to provide more crude oil input to its system.
