Price changes for Thursday, October 1, 2015

Hi to all,

Here's what I have for price changes for Thursday:

Heating and stove oils to increase by a penny
Diesel to increase by 8/10ths of a cent a litre, and...
Gasoline shows an increase of 3/10ths of a cent a litre.

 

In the news

 

A halt to Arctic drilling

Royal Dutch Shell has announced it is discontinuing its offshore exploration program off Alaska, and that goes in hand with sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine, in fact, hitting RDS twice. The plans by Royal Dutch Shell included a program of drilling in Russian Arctic waters that lay between that country and Alaska. While it may appear surprising, it shouldn't in a new world of $50 US a barrel oil along with the fact that they simply couldn't explore in their program against sanctions placed that disrupted exploration. It wasn't all about $50 US.

 

With the potential of upwards of 25 billion barrels estimated to be in Arctic waters, I find it hard to believe that they would turn away from a project that could result from the discovery of such potential reserves.

 

Canadian dollar figures against fuel prices...Again

The Canadian dollar has again accounted for a slight increase to prices this week. While some refined commodity prices slipped slightly this week, the drop in the Canadian dollar against the US greenback. Had the dollar remained stable this past week, we could have been looking at a drop of a penny across the board. As it stands right now, had the dollar been at par with the US dollar, we would be looking at heating/stove oils, gasoline and Diesel all 13 cents plus taxes lower than what we see to the consumer right now. 

 

 US refineries still down for winter maintenance

With almost 18.6 million barrel a day capacity, one would almost be in shock in learning that 1.4 million barrels is presently offline due to factors like winter maintenance schedules. No need to be alarmed as refiners routinely shut down refining to switch over to production of winter fuels like heating oils and diesel fuels at this ti. Refiner capacity should start to climb again in the coming weeks, taking further supporting pressure off gasoline prices as inventory is again added to stocks. 

 

That's it for this week!

 

Regards,

 

George

Twitter @GeorgeMurphyMHA