Up to 90 gas stations in Alberta alone could be out of gas soon, following problems at a Petro-Canada oil refinery.
Alexandra Zabjek, Canwest News Service
Published: Friday, August 15, 2008
Original article
VPO thinknote - this is just a single mechanical problem at one refinery. Notice how quickly existing supplies ran out. What would happen in the event of a large-scale shortage?
EDMONTON - Up to 90 stations in the interior of British Columbia and Alberta could run dry over the course of the shutdown of local Petro-Canada’s refinery, said company spokeswoman Kelli Stevens.
She would not comment on whether individual store owners would be compensated for revenues lost while regular gas supplies are curtailed. Diesel supplies have not been interrupted.
“In terms of the financial aspects of it, those discussions would be between us and the retailers, and they’re not going to be made public,” Stevens said. “They also haven’t happened yet, as our first priority is, obviously, to fix the cat cracker.”
The catalytic cracking unit - also known as a cat cracker - is key to the last step before finished gasoline is produced at a refinery. The unit was shut down on Aug. 3 while the rest of the refinery had already been closed for regular maintenance.
The local refinery typically has a crude capacity of 135,000 barrels per day.
At least nine of the company’s stations in Edmonton alone were without gas Friday.
Petro-Canada has both company-owned and franchised stations. Several Edmonton-area managers said they were instructed not to talk to news media. Several said their daily sales had been slashed anywhere between 50 and 85 per cent.
“It’s pretty quiet, but we’re keeping alive,” said one manager.
The company is tapping its supplies on the West Coast and in Eastern Canada to fill the gaps now created in Alberta and the interior of British Columbia, where there are almost 200 Petro-Canada stations. Edmonton is the refining hub, and the company has had to reverse its operations by having to transport more fuel inland.
Trucks will be used to move some of that fuel.
Frank Atkins, a professor of economics at the University of Calgary, said refineries are routinely shut down due to technical problems, but he’s surprised the problem hasn’t been fixed more quickly at the Edmonton refinery.
“These refineries are old, they do go down, they do require a lot of maintenance,” he said.
“The larger picture is that in a normal industry, the outage of one factory isn’t going to throw the whole industry into turmoil. But the fact that you have so few refineries, and they’re running at capacity during peak season like this, as soon one goes down, it causes a lot of trouble.”
Petro-Canada is not speculating on when the refinery might start running again.
