Shell rations gasoline in Western Canada

[TithonusSyndrome]

But everything's fine, people, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!

Shell rationing gasoline, diesel in Western Canada
Tue Feb 12, 2008 1:02pm EST

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Royal Dutch Shell Plc's refinery in Alberta is running at reduced rates, forcing the company to ration fuel to its own Western Canadian retail network and to commercial customers, a spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

There is no indication yet when the 98,000 barrel a day Scotford refinery near Edmonton will be back at full rates, Shell spokeswoman Jana Masters said.

Masters declined to say how much fuel the plant is producing or whether mechanical problems were causing the fuel shortages, which are affecting Saskatchewan, Alberta and northern British Columbia.

"I can't give you any kind of number but I can tell you that Shell has initiated equitable allocations on gasoline and diesel," Masters said.

Local media reports said some Saskatchewan gas stations have reported low inventories.

The refinery is supplied by the adjacent Scotford upgrader, which turns oil sands-derived crude into synthetic oil. Masters said she could not comment on the operations of the upgrader.

That plant was shut down for much of November and December following a fire.

Petro-Canada's refining and retail operations in Western Canada have not been negatively affected by the Shell situation, said Kelli Stevens, Petro-Canada spokeswoman.

"Supplies are getting tight but we haven't had to put any restricted allocations on our retail pickup," Stevens said.

(Reporting by Jeffrey Jones; Editing by Rob Wilson)

So even in the heart of oil country, where the labor force pledges a kind of fanatical faith in the oil supply available here and react with scorn and anger to the very notion of peak oil, we're not immune. Wonder how long it'll take before their three trucks and two quads and snowmobile in every garage go the way of the dodo...

[Glocksman]

Well, refinery problems have nothing to do with Peak Oil.
But I will say how convenient for Shell that even rumors of refinery issues cause prices to jump across the board.

[Gerald Tarrant]

That plant was shut down for much of November and December following a fire.

So even in the heart of oil country, where the labor force pledges a kind of fanatical faith in the oil supply available here and react with scorn and anger to the very notion of peak oil, we're not immune. Wonder how long it'll take before their three trucks and two quads and snowmobile in every garage go the way of the dodo...

um, no. Note the snip from your article? Associating this with peak oil as you did here

So even in the heart of oil country, where the labor force pledges a kind of fanatical faith in the oil supply available here and react with scorn and anger to the very notion of peak oil, we're not immune.

does not follow. Peak oil may cause these problems at some point in the future. But the article notes that the refinery has already had fire troubles.

Oh and apparently Glocksman beat me to the punch.

[J]

We had a similar outage in Ontario about a year ago, many gas stations ran out of gasoline and prices shot up about 30% in a single month.

With regards to refineries and peak oil, all the oil companies know that peak oil is real, and that if it hasn't happened yet it's going to happen pretty soon, likely within the next 5 years or so according to their internal memos. That's why no one's bothering to build new oil refineries, all the oil majors know that by the time a new refinery is built, there won't be enough oil for it to profitably process. They'll more or less run their existing refineries into the ground, and as a result you can expect more outages and unscheduled maintenance downtime in coming years.

[Sea Skimmer]

Stuff like this has happened before, though it didn’t always mean formal rationing, a couple years back several US states basically ran out of gas after a pipeline failure for example. It’s not at all odd for oil producing regions to have minimal or no refinery capacity, in fact that’s the normal way things are. You rarely find oil in the areas which use it most, and you build the refineries as close to the end users as possible since its easier shipping crude oil around then fifty different refined products.