MONTREAL – Motorists in Montreal woke up to a nasty shock Wednesday morning, as the price of gasoline hit a record-breaking high of $1.53.
Cédric Essiminy at CAA Quebec offered a word of advice to Montrealers heading to the pumps.
“Wait a bit before you fill up,” he advised.
If you held off until lunchtime, you would have saved a few pennies, as most stations had settled to a more reasonable $1.49 by noon.
The price of gas was expected to rise due to risks associated with tensions between Iran, Israel and the U.S.
But the cause for the overnight leap has been attributed to the fact that retailers had not raised pump costs since the floor price was recalculated by the Quebec Energy Board to $1.42.
Drivers were buying at lower than acquisition price – and retailers couldn’t keep selling gas cheaper than they were buying it for.
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One motorist filling up at the pumps today asked a question on everyone’s minds: “It’s not the fault of the retailers . . . but there’s someone who’s making a profit – and it seems to be a great mystery.”
So who’s raking in the most money when the prices hit the ceiling?
Us.
No, not the U.S. – us.
“Yesterday was a record-breaking price,” Carol Montreuil, vice president of the Canadian Petroleum Products Institute told Global News.
“We’ve never been above $1.50 and the reason is that we have one of the richest taxation regimes in the country.”
That’s right. Taxes! These pay for our roads, our healthcare, our garbage collection. Right?
“Taxes have been increased by recent government budgets over the last three years, we have transit commission tax in Montreal that’s doubled over the past couple of years and over and above that, GST and PST are added,” he noted.
But what about the oil companies? Aren’t they taking in a profit?
BP’s quarterly results for the second quarter of 2012 were $3.7 billion, Royal Dutch Shell’s second quarter 2012 earnings were $6.0 billion and Imperial Oil’s earnings in the second quarter of 2012 were $635 million.
“This is an industry that is very capital intensive,” Montreuil explained.
“Yes they do make billions of dollars, but they also invest billions of dollars.”
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