Pump paradox

With energy prices so high, what incentive do cash-rich oil-producing nations and multinationals have to increase supplies?

As gasoline prices soar to upwards of $1.10 per litre in the GTA, motorists stare at the rapidly revolving figures on the pump and curse multinational oil companies suspected of manipulating prices, governments that reap a tax windfall whenever prices rise


Meanwhile, in the transportation sector, at least, we seem trapped in our dependence on fossil fuels given the painfully slow pace of alternative-fuel development and distribution. Even assuming ultra-fuel-efficient vehicles were by now widely available, a mere 1,000 or so of North America’s quarter-million filling stations are equipped to pump ethanol-blend and hybrid-hydrogen fuels.

But that doesn’t mean consumers need be so vulnerable to the volatilities of a global oil market in which prices abruptly spike upward due to a refinery shutdown like the one at Imperial Oil Ltd.’s Nanticoke facility earlier this year, or the capsizing of oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and other hurricane-prone regions, or interminable civil wars and political upheaval that routinely disrupt oil production in Nigeria, Sudan, Iraq and other major producing nations.

Toronto Star