Petroleum Price Regulation Controversy
The provinces of Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick regulate the retail prices of all petroleum products (gasoline, diesel, propane, home heating fuel). Prince Edward Island has been regulating its prices since the 1980s and Newfoundland since the 1990s, however Nova Scotia and New Brunswick only implemented price regulation in 2006 in response to public pressure over wild price fluctuations during the winter of 2005-2006.
Wilson Fuel's subsidiary Wilsons Gas Stops has been consistently opposed to price regulation based on the company's belief that customers benefit from a free market price. Wilsons Gas Stops moved into the Prince Edward Island marketplace in early 2005 after purchasing several Esso stations from Imperial Oil; this coming after several years of studying how the long-established price regulation scheme was working in that province. In the days following Hurricane Katrina, wholesale international prices for petroleum increased dramatically, forcing Wilsons and other independent (i.e. non-refining) retailers to adjust their prices accordingly, except that this wasn't possible in the regulated retail market in Prince Edward Island. On September 1, Wilsons Gas Stops announced that it would stop supplying fuel to its company-owned stations and its independent retail customers since the company would be taking a severe financial loss if it were to do so.
Wilsons Gas Stops has continued to voice concern at increased price regulation in Atlantic Canada in the months since the price fluctuations following Hurricane Katrina.
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