Thank you.
I don't have any other members on my list.
I did want to ask a few questions of the witnesses. First of all, thank you for coming in today.
When Natural Resources Canada were here they gave us the Canada average pump price components, and I think it's important to keep coming back to this. The 2006 average retail price was 97.7¢ per litre, crude oil was 45.8¢, the federal and provincial taxes portion was 32.7¢, refining margin 14.1¢, and marketing 5.1¢.
Their explanation on crude oil is that Canada produces 3% of the crude oil and we are therefore a price taker and we therefore cannot influence that portion of the final price of gasoline. Federal and provincial governments can choose to increase or decrease taxes, according to how they best see fit. The marketing margin, we are told, is 5.1¢ per litre, so it's fairly small. It's a very competitive market, especially at the local level.
So the hearings have really focused on the refining margin, which according to the 2006 average is 14.1¢. A big question there is of the margin, what is cost and what is profit? I thought I heard you say here today, Mr. Macerollo, that the profit was 1.5¢ per litre. I don't know if that was for 2006, but that's saying that the cost of refining is 12.6¢.
Am I correct in separating the cost and the profit within the refining margin?