Last week gasoline prices soared in southern B.C., with the price at the pump in Vancouver hitting over $1.55 per litre. This was not due to a restriction of supply, although Alberta Premier Rachel Notley jumped on the opportunity to once again misrepresent reality in order to draw erroneous conclusions supporting the need for Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain expansion.
“There are a lot of ways in which the province of B.C. can assure an adequate supply of gasoline in order to combat the ridiculous prices that they pay,” Notley said in Calgary last week.
If B.C. (Read more…) to keep gasoline prices low, she said, it should stop opposing the Kinder Morgan oil pipeline expansion as it would increase “the ability of Alberta to ship more product to the West.”
Notley assumes B.C. needs more crude oil to supply the Parkland refinery in Burnaby and more refined petroleum product to supply the retail outlets that Parkland’s refinery does not. She also assumes that building Trans Mountain’s expansion means Alberta’s oil producers and refiners will ship more product to B.C. Neither assumption is correct.