How Tories Dumped Your Interests at the Pump
Oil is cheaper by half. So why don’t feds try and deliver savings to drivers?
Oil prices have plunged by 50 per cent since last year, but you would never know that looking at what people are paying at the pump. What gives?
Don’t ask the Conservatives. They halted the department in charge of telling us how much their Big Oil backers are profiting from those market-defying high prices.
When will the feds return to the business of revealing just how much we are getting screwed? The day this election is over, they say.
It’s a prime example of preemptory political damage control, and here are the details:
There is a quaint term in the oil refining business called the “crack spread.” This is the profit margin between the cost of buying crude oil and the retail price of produced gasoline. The “crack spread” keeps widening as Canadian consumers as they shell out almost as much per litre even though crude oil prices are roughly half what they were a year ago.
According to research by economist Robyn Allan, this yardstick of gas pump profit margins ballooned by 87 per cent above the 14-year industry average of 17.7 cents. Canadians buy over 43 billion litres of gas per year, so this year’s yawning crack spread adds up to big money for refiners. Canadians are on track to shell out over $5 billion in extra money to the oil industry in 2015 due to this apparent price-gouging at the pumps.
And what is the Harper government doing to protect Canadian consumers from such predatory profiteering? Making sure you don’t hear about it. Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) regularly publishes their Fuel Focusreport every two weeks detailing gas prices and refinery margins. That was until last summer.
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