If you’re driving in Western Canada and need to get gas, don’t be surprised if your local Petro-Canada station doesn’t have any.
Many Petro-Canada outlets in four provinces were either out of gas or quickly running out Friday morning.
Sneh Seetal, spokeswoman for Suncor, Petro-Canada’s parent company, says an unplanned outage recently at its Edmonton refinery is contributing to the gas shortage.
“The part of the refinery that experienced the outage produces gasoline. As a result, gasoline production is substantially reduced,” Seetal said.
“Because of this situation, we’ve had to temporarily curtail the volume of diesel and gasoline for our customers in parts of Western Canada, and there will be a temporary shortage of supply.”
According to Dan McTeague, senior petroleum analyst with GasBuddy.com, that refinery produces 140,000 barrels of oil a day and supplies gas to cities as far away as Thunder Bay.
There will be shortages at Petro-Canada sites in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba as well as some sites throughout the B.C. Interior until the problems are solved, Seetal said.
McTeague says the oilsands production shutdowns caused by the Fort McMurray, Alta., fire have also contributed to the problem.
“We are doing everything we can to improve the situation. The cumulative impact of the fires and the unplanned outage at Edmonton was unanticipated,” Seetal said.
“We are taking a number of steps. We are bringing in additional supply for our Edmonton refinery and we are also restarting our oil sands operations in a safe and staged manner.”
Suncor also is bringing in additional gas from other parts of its network and other companies, and transporting it by truck and rail as quickly as possible, Seetal said.