"Thomas Lunde" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> quoted:
>Fuel prices jolt drivers
>Ontario studies price freeze as industry claims 'price war' over
>Pauline Tam
>The Ottawa Citizen; With files from The Canadian Press
>Chris Mikula, The Ottawa Citizen / In the past year, gasoline at this
>west-end service station has cost as little as 45 cents a litre.
[...]
>Motorists were shocked yesterday to find that many of the region's gas
>stations had raised their prices to a high of 60.9 cents a litre -- an
>overnight jump of almost seven cents, or 14.2 per cent.
These guys are so excitable, it's a good thing they don't live on the
west coast. Out here, gas prices climbed steadily through the '90s to
nearly 70 cents, which includes a Vancouver transit levy. Then Arco
opened a new expanded refinery just across the border to process Alaskan
oil, and found it wasn't able to ship product at a rate sufficient
to keep its refinery operating in its high volume efficient range.
So it opened a string of retail outlets across southwest BC, and
started a price war which brought prices down to as low as 36 cents,
drving some stations out of business. Basically it used BC as a
release valve for its excess product. Now, local prices will yoyo between
40 and 65 cents depending on how much product Arco is able to move south
of the border. It's gotten so nuts that a bunch of locals have cobbled
together a website which reports up to the minute data on which
gas stations in greater Vancouver have the cheapest gas price,
and they accept information from the public via email, phone and
fax. (It's at gaswars.intouch.ca for anyone who wants to look). I
suppose that opens a whole can of worms about the use of networked
information to enhance the race to the bottom. It is of course
the local station personnel who take the hit when the gas wars move
prices into the red. The oil companies and the various gov'ts are
all guaranteed their cut.
-Pete Vincent
