The drop in gasoline prices, anticipated for the beginning of this week, was “not sufficient”, deplores CAA-Quebec.
The destabilization of the stock markets by the arrival of the Omicron variant as well as the decision of American President Joe Biden to draw on his national oil reserves, however, heralded a fall in prices in this highly unstable sector.
“It is deplorable that the service stations have not retransmitted the drops that have been observed on the market over the past few days and weeks,” says the organization’s communications advisor, Andrée-Ann Déry, in a phone interview.
What she is referring to is the retailer’s margin, which is the difference between the selling price of his gasoline and the price at which he bought it himself.
In the last 52 weeks, CAA-Quebec calculates an average difference of 5.5 cents per liter in the province. At the end of last week, despite the drop in prices, we saw margins of “up to 18 or 20 cents per liter in certain regions”.
“We can understand the consumer, when he has this information, to have the impression that gas stations are directly taking their money out of their pockets,” commented Mme Déry.
Many costs
But margin does not mean profit, underlines the President and CEO of the Association of Energy Distributors of Quebec (ADEQ), Sonia Marcotte.
“You have to subtract the GST and the QST, because it doesn’t stay in the pockets of the retailer,” she explains.
However, even excluding these taxes, some municipalities were still close to 20 cents as of Friday, according to the Régie de l’énergie du Québec. This was the case, among others, for Quebec, Gaspé, Val-d’Or and Sept-Îles.
Gas stations are also faced with other expenses, such as “employee wages, municipal taxes and the value of equipment,” adds Mr.me Marcotte. For example, “we know that in Montreal, there is an additional tax for public transport”.
ADEQ estimates that to stay afloat, a company must make a margin between 5.8 and 7.1 cents per liter, depending on its region. “We calculated this really minimally”, considering the minimum wage, specifies Mme Marcotte. “There are a lot of retailers who will pay more for their employees, especially when there is a labor shortage. ”
Always moving
How then can we justify a difference of 20 cents per liter? “You should not stop on a single day, you have to look at it as a whole”, she replies, as “we do not know when the retailer bought it, its essence”. “Throughout November, the price at the refinery was very high. It’s been going down lately, so there are retailers who still have gasoline in their tanks that they paid more for, […] for them, it may be more difficult to lower. ”
On the CAA-Quebec side, the Gasoline Info tool allows consumers to see what the so-called “realistic” price should be at the pump, by calculating each day the costs that service stations pay to buy their stock, and by calculating it. adding the average margin of the last 52 weeks.
As of Saturday, motorists in all regions of Quebec were paying a price higher than this estimate in most points of sale.
“We should not rely too much on certain average margins”, however nuance Mme Déry. In Center-du-Québec, for example, the annual average is 3 cents per liter, which, in the long term, would not allow homeowners to keep their heads above water. Meanwhile, in the Gaspé, the average climbs to 12 cents per liter.
Mme Marcotte explains these differences by the fact that “transport costs can be different from one region to another”, as do “operating costs” and “market dynamics”.
This article has been produced with the financial support of the Facebook and The Canadian Press News Scholarships.