Refinery glitch causes gas shortage in Alta., B.C.
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CTV.ca News Staff
Petro-Canada says that some of its gas stations in Alberta and the B.C. interior are running out of fuel.
Its Edmonton refinery's catalytic cracking unit -- or "cat cracker" -- was shut down last week due to problems, limiting the supply of gasoline coming out of the facility.
Frank Atkins of the University of Calgary told CTV Newsnet that the impact of one refinery reducing capacity can be felt almost immediately.
"Gasoline is always the problem here -- the main culprit here is what we call the 'refinery problem,'" Atkins said.
"We haven't built any new refinery capacity in probably 20, 25 years and as soon as one of the refineries goes down, even for just a couple of days, there's no more gas around."
Atkins said there are several reasons for Canada's lack of refineries. He said that the environmental hurdles to building new facilities are difficult to overcome.
He points to the Irving company's plan to build a new facility in Saint John, N.B., saying "almost instantly the environmental lobby was all over them . . . so you have to fight them and you have to fight the very real environmental review process which could go on for years."
Atkins added that the refinery business has a very thin financial margin, and there isn't a lot of money to be made by a company building more facilities.
Even if someone started to build a new facility, it would take about five years to go on-line, he said.
"At the moment, we appear to be stuck with what we got," Atkins added.
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