Amen brother!

OK.Lets pick a station……enough already

I pick Shell. I’m already boycotting them due to their brutal behavior in Nigeria where several years ago, they had 11 men hung after they organized a strike against Shell’s operations in that beleaguered country. Comes right down to it, I’d join a boycott against any gas company in PG; I’ve had enough.
This was not the sort of thing I thought would work and would be more of an attack on local business people, but I’m ready to give it a try, so let’s vote.
Please count one vote for Shell Oil.

In my travels I have noticed three things

1. the price at gas stations typically varies as much as 10% within very short distances even though the taxes on gas do not vary – at the moment gas buddy shows a range of $3.93 to $4.30 in the Northwest.

2. the price at individual stations moves up and down several times a week.

3. even though Washington has a large refinery capacity between Cherry Point and Anacortes, the gasoline prices are among the highest in the USA.

Finally, the average prices in the USA and Canada have followed the same peaks and valleys. We are reaching the peak price of July 2008 at the moment.

I cannot remember the last time I bought gas at Shell. Could be close to 10 years ago.

My most common place is to buy gas at Superstore.

I notice that PG and Quesnel show up with the same price of $1.389

Williams Lake between 1.269 and 1.299

Cache Creek $1.269 and $1.309

Hope $1.249

Kelowna $1.339 to $1.369

Kamloops $1.289 to $1.329

Nanaimo $1.219 to $1.259 (they have lots of refineries there …. LOL)

If Enbridge builds the pipeline we can all breath a sigh of relief. That should surely bring the price of fuel down.

In addition to what Ben mentions above, when the price of gas goes up, the price of all products trucked into Prince George goes up.

And guess what? Everything we consume in the town is trucked in. Produce, milk, dry goods, furniture, etc; etc; etc;

So. We get a double whammy. We pay more for the gas, and we pay more on the products we buy. In addition the Government gets an increase in revenue through the gas tax, the HST/GST, and the carbon tax.

So. The oil companies benefit, the Government benefits, and Joe and Jane citizen once again get shafted.

I think that before we boycott an individual oil companies stations in Prince George, or BC, someone should start a petition to the Provincial Government, ie: Christy Clark, and the Federal Government, Stephen Harper, with copies to
our local MP’s, MLA’s. Mayor, and Councillors, telling them that we are sick and tired of being gouged, and asking them what they intend to do about the rising costs of gas and diesel, and the detrimental effect it is having on people.

We can and should expect a response from our elected officials, even if it is just ***We cant do anything**

We certainly know that they can do something in terms of Provincial and Federal taxes on gas. They can certainly do something in terms of royalties.

The politicians have been hiding from this issue for years, and its time for us to shine some daylight on them.

I suggest that Ben, himself, or someone he knows with the expertise get this petition started on line, and the it is up to the rest of us to ensure that we get thousands of signatures, and get this ball rolling.

If at the end of the day, they continue to ignore us, then we can target a specific oil company and begin a boycott, which in my opinion should get all the press coverage possible, to get the message out.

**Lets rattle some chains**

Talking to the politicians will take way too long.
Let’s have a general strike, even 1 day should help.
Don’t drive, don’t go to work, don’t go shopping, stay at home and enjoy the day.
We all together can do it and may be than the politicians will wake up.

If the price of gas ever went up $0.40 cents a gallon overnight south of the border there would be massive public outrage and the politicians would be involved if only to provide lip service to the public.
In canada we get taken to the cleaners not only on gasoline. A new Seadoo GTI on sale in Canada $10,299.00. South of the border in Phoenix $7,295.00 at Apache motorsports.

Course we could always hope that the politicians, would command all the branded stations have a province wide uniform price policy.
One brand of gas would be the same price in one far flung town as it is in the city. That’s because the individual stations don’t set the prices. The Oil companies do.
So, the oil companies can raise the price of their gas, ANYTIME WITH ONE WEEKS WRITTEN NOTICE.
They can go down anytime, but up only with notice and they all must go up at the same time IN THEIR BRAND ONLY to the same price province wide.
Then we will see how the oil companies compete.

If it’s any consolation, the mysterious price increase happened across the country. It was over $1.50 a litre in the Montreal area.

The only way to ower gas prices is to reduce demand. Use less. Until then, suck it up, PG.

One of the most annoying things is if and when the price drops you can bet your bottom dollar that it will not be anywhere near 129.9 per liter before the 9 cent increase..The gas companies will eventually get the price up to $1.50 per liter and continue to watch their profits grow,and now the feds are proposing having an onbudsman looking into complaints about high fuel costs. How many years have the public been complaining about goughing and nothing ever happens?

I dont think it has anything to do with demand.

There are some people in this Country that would tell you that the Carbon Tax is working because the sales of gas/diesel has gone down in the past few years.

Keep in mind if we buy less gas, and the oil companies make less money, then they would increase the price to make up for lost revenue.

Maybe the price is rising because of a decrease in sales. Who knows??

In any event if they dont sell it here, they will sell it somewhere else.

Bottom line is the Governments have controls to some extent because they can demand higher royalties as the price rises.

Once the Government receives thousands of signatures, it will be compelled to do something. Especially with an election coming. If they dont then we go to plan 2.

Sitting on our butts complaining will get nothing done, and is exactly what they want us to do.

Supply is not the problem, it’s because we rely on gas so much, demand allows them to keep gouging us. IMO, there is something we can do to reduce the demand without everyone walking to work in -20C. If everyone gets into the habit to only fill up with just enough gas to get them through, and keep just enough gas in the tank in case of emergency and not running on Empty (which is also hard on the fuel pump), this will hurt the companies as much as a boycott, as it will increase their inventories, and their carrying costs (If every car/truck has an average of 10 extra litres in their tank, and there are 10,000 cars/trucks in PG, that is 100,000 litres of inventory the consumer is paying the carrying cost for the gas company. Imagine what this cost is for Canada!). Inventories in a consumer market are tough to predict, they need to carry enough inventory that if everyone fills up, they don’t run out, yet carrying extra inventory costs money, so it is a constant juggling act.
All bigger company keep very close track of inventory. Extra inventory is money, and they apply a cost to carrying extra inventory in their accounting system. The quickest way for a company to get rid of extra inventory and still make money is to reduce the price to a point consumers buy it, yet keep that price drop above the carrying cost that it would have cost them to hold it. Example, if their carrying cost is $0.25/ltr per month, it makes them more profitable to drop the price of extra inventory by $0.15, and have the consumer take the problem off their hands, rather than lose the $0.25/ltr carrying cost. If you use half a tank of gas a week, but fill up (say $100 a tank), you are absorbing $50 in carrying costs for them, and helping them make more money (they have smartly got us into the mindset that if we don’t fill up, gas may go up, and it will cost us more next week, a brilliant strategy by them, because, would you fill your tank if you thought the price was going to drop?).. If we apply the same accounting principle they use as a consumer, and apply $0.25/ltr carrying cost to have more gas in our tanks then we will use in a specific period of time, then we would be less concerned about the gas increase next week, as long as it does not go up over the cost we apply as our carrying cost, we are still ahead in the long run.. just a thought.

Shaken&stirred. I agree with you 100%. In fact I suggested something similiar a few years ago, and only filled my tank to the halfway mark for a few months.

Why should we the consumer be a storage facility for the Oil Companies??.

Problem is, we have too many people who get their jollies from bitching and bellyaching, but wont get off thier butts and do anything, so the chances of this idea talking off are not good.

As an example by filling your tank half full, you would have to go the the service station twice as often as you do now. For those who think that laziness, is a virtue, they would never do that. Its like asking a couch potato to take less food every time he goes to the fridge. That would mean more trips, so instead he loads up to save trips, and still fill his gut.

You can try to get your idea to float through a website or somesuch, and I for one would support you.

Instead of playing around with what essentially amounts to a timing difference, why not really try and hit their bottom line and purchase less fuel overall? Of course, this would mean purchasing more fuel efficient vehicles, buying the small V8 option in your next truck instead of the big V8, going 100 on the highway instead of 115, putting on some gloves in the winter instead of warming up your truck for 20 minutes before hopping in, etc.

My conclusion is that the oil companies know we won’t change our habits, many of them purely of convenience, and they reap the benefits as a result.

Can anyone verify the rumour that several of our City Councilors have owners stakes in local gas stations?

Despite what you see in the comments section of this site, there aren’t enough people angry about gas prices to change their habits.

Clicking on a website petition will accomplish nothing, and isn’t much more than a token gesture.

I agree with Palopu. I am hoping that a petition will at least be started, so that the government is forced to at least do something, or pretend to do something.

“As an example by filling your tank half full, you would have to go the the service station twice as often as you do now.”
As long as you are using the same amount of gas, it won’t make a difference. The amounts you are talking about are so insignificant to the gas companies, that it just doesn’t matter. Buy the gas 2x a week, or once, or everyday, as long as you are buying it, they don’t care.

I came across this article last week in the Naniamo Daily News.

http://www.canada.com/Analyst+says+greed+main+factor+behind+steadily+rising+fuel+prices/7237680/story.html

If you like paying high fuel prices vote for Harper. We have collusion in this country and it starts from the top.

118.4 costco Abbotsford
keep on doing Pg what you do best ,charge the highest and you you will see your Costumers to make every effort to buy somewhere else ! buy online, go to the Lower Mainland for your Car, I know you don’t Care

Everyone keeps focussed on the retail price for gas that goes in their cars but that is actually a small hazard to our wellbeing compared to what this price gouging does to the rest of our economy.

I have said this before and I will say it again, Canada’s resource economy is the most energy intensive/consuming economy in the world. It is one of the coldest places, it is one of the largest and farthest distances to populated places, it is void of efficient rail systems and we truck most of everything we produce somewhere. Whether it is forestry or agriculture or mining etc. , the huge proportion of costs to those industries is in fuels.

On the other side of the ledger, every time that the price of oil goes up so does our dollar which causes our exports to be more expensive and less competitive.

Go ahead and complain about filling up your car but you might not have a job for long that allows you to even have a car or need to drive to work?

I noticed when the gas price jump came last week, that the Superstore was careful to sell off the fuel in their tanks BEFORE they raised the price. All the other gas staions raised it immediately, thereby gaining the increase on gas they had bought at the lower price.

NoWay: Unless you were being facaetious, you really need to listen to Robyn Allen.

Allright already lets pick a station!!!!!!ENOUGH.

I hope everyone has your locking gas caps on.
They never wanted us to enjoy it when the price was down everywhere else this summer, so lets get this boycott started.
This is about just Prince George being gouged. Don’t try to slough Canada’s economy on just P.G., Forsight! Prince George has been paying the brunt of these gas hike’s for the last year now. When place’s in the rest of this Province has enjoyed gas price’s dramatically lower in comparison to us! ENOUGH is ENOUGH.:(

I’m in California. I filled up for 4.15/gal but that gallon is smaller than our gallon by .7 of a litre. When I do the math the US gas here in Redding is 1.09 a litre. On the coast highway yesterday, gas was 4.32 per gallon. In Oregon it was 3.98 to 4.15. I’ve noticed that Safeway has the cheapest fuel here. Every station is different — one Shell will be 4.15 while the next Shell will be 4.25?? It was the same in Washington–not all stations were the same. It means there is a conspiracy in PG — simple.

Just to play devils advocate… People on here have been saying that gas would hit $1.50 per litre for about five years now. This spring people claimed it would hit $2.00 this summer. So 1.38 should be a deal, no? ;)

I managed a gas station here in PG for many years. It disgusted me how gas stations/companies have increased their own profit more and more with each passing year. There is one company in town whose stations only profit 3 cents/litre no matter what the price is (the parent company takes the rest of the profit). Every other station makes their own profit (of course, most have to pay fees to the parent gas company for the fuel they sell). When I first started at that job, we were happy to make 5-7 cents/litre. By the time I left the job, our stations were making anywhere from 15-30 cents/litre.

As for “price fixing” in PG – anyone that says that it doesn’t happen is very mistaken. Each day, 90% of the stations in town are required to find out what all the other stations have their price at – when other stations begin to move their price, the rest are required by their head offices and/or their “parent” company to move as well. It was ridiculous how we were always told to NEVER talk about this in front of the general public.

As to the observation about Superstore not raising their price last week until they had sold through their existing product, I obviously can’t speak for them, but I know that the company I used to work for did the same thing – not in fairness to the consumer, but in order to increase sales and profits both in fuel and in-store product. “Last to go up and first to go down” after movement starts in prices is what keeps consumers “seeing the company in a good light” and had the biggest positive impact on on inside sales – that’s what we were told.