CALGARY — Greater Victoria gas prices are expected to remain relatively stable despite anticipated hikes in the eastern part of the country after hurricane Harvey forced many refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast to shut down.
“First off, it is probably a little early to give any sort of price outlook with any sort of precision,” said Jason Parent, vice-president of consulting at Kent Group Ltd., specialists in the downstream petroleum industry.
There are still unknowns as far as the impact of the storm on production pipelines, for example.
However, in Greater Victoria, motorists are unlikely to see much change in prices, Parent said from London, Ont.
Changes in the Canadian market are likely to be felt in the eastern part of the country, where there is a logistical connection to the Gulf of Mexico.
Greater Victoria’s prices are more reliant on refineries on the West Coast of the U.S., Parent said.
GasBuddy senior petroleum analyst Dan McTeague even suggested that prices could drop to some degree in Greater Victoria. The price of a litre of regular fuel at many capital region service stations was $1.299 on Monday, with Costco at $1.249, GasBuddy states.
Prices have been fairly stable since Aug. 9, when they jumped to $1.29 from $1.22 the day before.
Nationally, wholesale gasoline prices will likely rise by an average of two to four cents per litre by Thursday, meaning consumers in certain markets could see much higher price increases.
McTeague said retail operators in such markets as Calgary, Montreal and Ottawa are barely breaking even now and could use the wholesale price increase as an excuse to raise prices by as much as another 10 cents per litre to boost profit margins.
“Traders are taking a wait-and-see approach, and I think that’s really why you’re going to see very little, for now at least, in the way of any major spikes until at least Thursday or Friday,” he said.
Canadian gasoline prices shown on the GasBuddy.com website were little changed on Monday. U.S. prices are expected to spike over the next week or more as about 10 refineries representing more than 15 per cent of American refining capacity are closed, including ExxonMobil, Shell and Phillips 66 operations.
Canadian companies with assets in the Gulf Coast area joined their American counterparts in closing offices and hunkering down to wait out the storm.
Precision Drilling CEO Kevin Neveu, who splits his time between Alberta and Texas, said his house in the Houston suburbs is dry so far, but flooding has damaged the homes of at least five of his company’s 300 Houston-area employees.
“Our No. 1 priority right now is make sure our employees are safe and sound and their houses aren’t damaged,” he said.
Calgary-based pipeline company Enbridge, which bought Houston-headquartered Spectra Energy this year, said it closed its Houston offices and removed all but essential staff from its natural gas gathering and processing facilities in the Gulf of Mexico. “We will continue to actively monitor the storm to determine if further actions are needed,” spokeswoman Suzanne Wilton said.
