The Price of Gas During the Holidays

Oil is something everyone needs in this world. We need it for powering cars and powering planes. The price of oil is staggering sometimes here in Canada where it can reach over $1.10 a liter. That number can sometimes increase over the holidays where gas stations expect suckers to fill up over the holidays.

Currently oil is at a two year high. Currently the US looks worried at what would happen if oil reaches over $100 US a barrel. Currently it's at $91 US a barrel so we're getting close. Our Arab partners aren't making more oil to make the price go down because they think that increased demand will make people not want oil anymore and will drive down demand and oil prices. Well I may not be in America, but we Canadians don't like high gas prices a lot especially when a our neighbors get more for their buck.

Canadians already get high gas prices, but it gets worse during the holidays. The price could sometimes ever reach $1.20 a liter for gas. They just want to grasp the people who will probably be going to visit friends or going across the border shopping. So far people are trying to not fill up. They are trying to avoid a fill up or go across the border to do so. In Seattle, Washington the price is $0.84 a liter. In Chicago it can get to $0.82 a liter. In Boston it's $0.80 a liter. This may be so, but the rising price of crude oil is not the problem here.

Well so may be it, our local gas stations are wanting more for their oil. Hoping to snatch more profits over the holidays they increase the price.

The Alberta Oil Sands

The Alberta Oil Sands is where Canada gets it's oil from. This is probably the worst ways to get oil from the Earth. Extracting the oil from the oil sands takes a ton of carbon already in addition to the carbon you'll waste burning it, but that's not the problem. The problem is it's effect on nature in the area.

Last fall a study showed fish in Fort McMurray were poisoned. The fish apparently was deformed and toxic compared to normal ones. The government boasts about its world class monitoring system that's supposed to prevent these things from happening. This lead to another study by an independent panel, formed by the Alberta government, about the people that are supposed to monitor the oil sands. A group was monitored by scientists about how they were monitoring the sands. The scientists concluded that there was no leadership, no coordination, and bluntly no success.

Currently the government is given pressure to clean up from it's partners like the US. The panel recommended the study above to see the impact of the oil sands on the environment, but not just the carbon impact.