posted on Sep, 3 2005 @ 06:48 PM
The price of gasoline went up 15 cents immediately after the hurricane across Canada. Canadian fuel companies said the price raise was direclty
because the Mississippi was cut off and the refineries in the Gulf were not working.
Seems rather strange considering Canada doesn't import gasoline from the USA, nor do we import oil from the USA, nor did the supply of oil get cut
off from OPEC (to Canada anyway). Now, if they'd said, "Gas will now be 20 cents a litre higher and 15 cents of each litre will go directly to
disaster relief," I would be all for it (but it's probably unconstitutional to have a required charitable donation tax). What it appears to be in
Canada is nothing more than a greedy money grab disguised as something caused by the hurricane 2000 miles from here. Unless, of course, Canada's
refineries are now redirecting twice as much refined gas into the USA and supply/demand has caused the price to skyrocket (then again, that sounds
like a money grab as well). Perhaps the refineries in the Gulf somehow subsidize the price of gas across North America, maybe the alaskan pipeline
(and the Alberta pipeline) are both currently shut down because there is nowhere for that oil to go and hence that income is currently cut off?
But, this hurricane has indeed directly raised the price of gas a lot. 15 cents a litre (that's about 60 cents a gallon) in one day is a pretty big
price increase I think. And the major refineries (Shell, Petro Canada, Esso, etc) have all said it's because of the hurricane damage in the south.
This will effect everything, the price of every single item you purchase anywhere will have to go up (you have to burn gas to transport stuff to the
retailer). And, 2 years later, once life is almost back to normal, will the price of gas go down? Of course not, the oil companies always make
money off the suffering of others. When times are good they make money, when times are bad they make even more money.