It would appear a shortage of gas that led to pump closures in Alberta last week is also rippling its way into Saskatchewan.
Gas pumps have been running dry for days at a time in Regina this past week. Last weekend, several stations were without gas from Friday through until Sunday or Monday.
Things had eased up a bit the following weekend, with many places running out but only having to wait an hour or two before a fuel delivery came in.
While some gas attendants are breathing a sigh of relief as the gas truck shows up, others in the city are wondering what’s going on.
A Shell station in Regina gets refilled after turning away customers while it was out of gas. (Anna-May Zeviar/CBC News)
What it boils down to is a supply crunch coming from a major player in one of Western Canada’s few refineries, said Dan McTeague, senior petroleum analyst at GasBuddy.com.
A month-long maintenance shutdown at Suncor’s Petro-Canada refinery in Edmonton is now stretching out to six weeks, and with no oil production going on in that location there is a supply crunch that’s hitting Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg, Calgary and Edmonton, McTeague said.
The shortage hits more than just Petro-Canada stations.
“Others have to supply or others are going to be constrained” as demand goes up, he said. “If my favourite Shell station is closed or my Suncor’s Petro-Can station is closed I will go to the next station because I gotta get fuel at the end of the day.”
Gas issues reach wide
Aside from Regina’s refinery, Edmonton’s refineries are the powerhouses that send fuel out to the B.C. interior all the way out to Ontario, McTeague said, so if one underestimates how much it needs to stock up during a production shutdown, it hits far and wide.
The way this shortage takes shape on the ground is that gas stations are put on what’s called “allocation,” McTeague said.
“What that means is you’re going to get gasoline you’re going to get a smaller amount of shipment and it may very well be delayed. So a lot of stations are running out of fuel, waiting for the next truck to come by to refuel. They will not get their full allotments,” he said.
“Each one of them will get a small amount in order to sort of allow everybody a little bit until we get over the problem.”
He said it’s possible gas imports will need to come in from the states to fill the demand if things don’t move faster with Suncor. If that’s the case, the markets will reflect that at the pump early in the week.