Update: Shell Canada staff were working hard to resupply Vancouver Island stations with gasoline after the wintry weather caused some of them to run out.
A steady line of customers were filling up again at the Shell station at the corner of Quadra and Falmouth Monday afternoon after the pumps were replenished.
A Shell Canada spokesman said in a Monday email that its staff was working hard to restock all stations.
Bad driving weather on Friday and a power outage at Shell’s tank farm in Chemainus on Saturday caused a “handful” of stations on Vancouver Island to run out, the spokesman said.
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Some Shell service stations in the capital region ran out of fuel to sell on the weekend, but had fuel again on Monday.
Signs on the pumps said the lack of fuel was caused by a power outage at the Shell fuel farm in Chemainus.
Swaths of Vancouver Island have been losing power since Friday due to snowfall. B.C. Hydro says the snow is weighing down tree limbs, which then break and fall onto power lines.
Shell stations in Sooke, Colwood and on Quadra Street in Saanich were among the ones telling customers that they did not have fuel to sell.
Regular gasoline was selling for around $1.169 a litre in Greater Victoria on the weekend.
Oil industry observer Dan McTeague of gasbuddy.com said if a gasoline shortage persists, prices will go up.
“The bigger emerging issue is that one of the four refineries in Washington state, this case Phillips 66, will be going through maintenance over the next 45 days at the same time another refinery in California is down temporarily,” he told CHEK News. “That means a lot of the gas supplies that come in British Columbia may very well be diverted to California.”
To attract gasoline deliveries to B.C., customers will need to pay higher prices, he said.
