Western Canada gasoline stations running out of fuel

OREANDA-NEWS. June 03, 2016.  Gasoline stations across Western Canada are running out of gas following weeks of oil sands shutdowns and an unplanned outage at Suncor Energy's Edmonton refinery.

Suncor, which operates PetroCanada retail gas stations, said the fuel shortages were the "accumulative impact" of wildfires that shut down up to 1.2mn b/d of oil sands production in May and a unit outage at its 142,000 b/d Edmonton refinery 27 May.

While the integrated company, Canada's largest oil producer, had been sourcing alternate feedstock, the unit outage made the fuel shortage unavoidable, a spokeswoman told Argus.

PetroCanada stations across Alberta and Saskatchewan started showing zeros on their price signs when they ran out of gas this week.

Suncor said it was restarting operations and ramping up production at its oil sands operations after getting clearance to return last week. The company did not say when the refinery unit would be back online, although the refinery is still producing, just at lower rates.