Demand crunch leaves Petro-Canada gas stations dry
CBC News/A gasoline shortage at Esso stations in Ontario spilled over to competitors on the weekend, leaving some of them with dry tanks too as they scrambled to meet customer demand.
Petro-Canada spokesman Jon Hamilton told CBC News on Monday that about 20 company outlets in the Toronto area were left without supplies over the weekend, with the rotating shortage ranging from a few hours to longer.
To combat shortages, Petro-Canada was limiting the amount of gasoline a customer could pump to 75 litres per fill-up.
Hamilton also said Petro-Canada is continuing to pump an extra 500,000 litres of gasoline and diesel into the Ontario marketplace each day to help meet growing demand at its stations.
“We’re doing everything we can to bring additional product supplies to consumers,” he said. “Hopefully, some of the refining issues that the industry seems to be having can be resolved quickly and we can move on quickly.”
Part of the problem for Petro-Canada has been getting fuel to the retailers, as the company doesn’t have enough supply trucks to keep up with the company’s increase in demand.
The gasoline shortage began after a Feb. 15 fire at Imperial Oil’s Nanticoke refinery in Ontario, and the problem was exacerbated by the CN Rail strike, which also limited the movement of fuel supplies.
With tanks running dry at some stations, prices at the pumps of outlets that still have gasoline have shot higher.
The average price for unleaded gasoline in Toronto on Monday was 96.788 cents per litre, according to the website torontogasprices.com. The prices are more than five cents a litre higher than they were a week ago, and well beyond the prices of one month ago, when the price stood at 77.831 cents per litre.
Imperial supplies Esso outlets and some Canadian Tire gas bars.
