To the editor:
“Bah Humbug” to all the gas stations in Kelowna. Each of you deserves to receive a lump of coal for Christmas.
Raising gasoline prices, 12 cents per litre overnight is so wrong. How can you justify such a large increase when the price of crude is dropping daily?
It is interesting to me to observe that when gas prices drop, it takes two to four days for all the stations in Kelowna to follow suit, but when prices go up it only takes a maximum of two hours for every last service station in Kelowna to raise the price of one litre of fuel to exactly the same price. It is in my humble opinion, that this is a form of price fixing which apparently is illegal.
The consumer should start demanding an investigation, immediately.
When the price of gas is increased, the service station realizes a huge windfall profit on every litre of fuel sold from his underground storage tanks. Typically a station may have 200,000 to 500,000 litres of fuel in storage. Let’s say a station had 100,000 litres in storage when he puts the price up 12 cents per litre this week. That folks, is a windfall profit of $12,000 after the product is sold.
The station operator’s immediate comeback will be that he has to offset his losses when prices were dropping.
True to an extent but when have you ever seen gas prices drop by 12 cents overnight? It usually happens at the rate of one, two or three cents each time, never 12.
The mere fact that gas prices seem to go up together, smells distinctly of price fixing.
Don’t you feel we should be calling for an investigation and ultimately the findings be made available to the general public?
In Kelowna there is no competition. Start objecting by putting pressure on your MLA and MP.
‘Bee’ Conway, Kelowna
