Subcommittee on Oil and Gas and Other Energy Prices committee  Thank you for enabling CIPMA, the Canadian Independent Petroleum Marketers Association, to address this committee on the subject of oil, gas, and other energy pricing. CIPMA represents the larger independent fuel marketers in Canada. What defines “independent” in the downstrea

Industry committee  On the first one—I have a good memory, but it's short—you were talking about the number of refineries and how many more we need. I'm afraid I don't have those data handy in terms of what we would need to balance supply and demand; in other words, to eliminate.... It's also very

Industry committee  Right.

Industry committee  It would take some work, no question. This is not a straightforward one-person job. I'm not suggesting it's a huge bureaucracy either. I think it's something we could accomplish quite easily.

Industry committee  Well, on the number of suppliers, again, we're talking about that fluid of competition. What makes markets perfect is an infinite number of competitors. Ideally you have a huge number of suppliers, but in terms of going from a handful of refiners to double that or triple that...a

Industry committee  Yes, I do. I think that's important. I think transparency is incredibly important. MJ Ervin is truly the only source right now, so I have no way of knowing if it's good or not good. But from a philosophical point of view, yes.

Industry committee  There are some issues with the implementation of the ethanol mandate in Ontario. It's to do with a specification called read vapour pressure, RVP, which is a measure of the volatility of the gasoline. Mid-grade cannot be blended on-site with non-ethanolized premium without exceed

Industry committee  Yes, it will do that. We haven't done a lot of analysis on that yet, but certainly from an environmental point of view it's a step forward.

Industry committee  I see what you mean. Yes, there are. We call them boutique fuels.

Industry committee  Just to add to that, absolutely. For example, the single E85 site in Ontario is a UPI site, which is an independent site. That particular independent has taken a big risk by putting that site in. With the price of ethanol where it is, which is high relative to gasoline, he has to

Industry committee  There are different specifications by state in the U.S. The one that I was addressing is sulphur in gasoline, which is consistent across both countries.

Industry committee  Not really.

Industry committee  I think we need to look at the way the U.S. does it, first of all. They have regions, for example. Obviously we need to choose a lead ministry on it, and probably Natural Resources Canada is in the best position to do that, although again that's my opinion. We need to look at reg

Industry committee  No, I don't believe there is.

Industry committee  I think the genesis of the system in the United States was for defence purposes, first of all. This is a judgmental comment, but I think that in terms of fuel products the U.S. takes their security of supply extremely seriously. We in Canada, because we are a net crude oil produc