TORONTO– The federal Conservative government won’t find a way to allow Ontario truckers to fill up temporarily with off-road diesel until the fuel supply disruption in that province settles.

At a press conference in Victoria following a meeting of the country’s energy ministers, federal minister of Natural Resources Gary Lunn said Ottawa would not grant the Ontario Trucking Association’s request of making available non-ULSD fuel (still used in off-road and rail) to the highway truckers in Ontario, which has been plagued with a province-wide fuel shortage since the middle of February.

The minister was short on specifics of what the federal government might do instead, but according to the OTA, he stated it is “doing the best it can in a tough situation” by speaking to oil companies and railways about redistributing fuel from other parts of Canada to Ontario.

Since Ottawa denied off road fuel to truckers, the
worst may lie ahead this week, Bradley says

Ontario’s Minister of Energy, Dwight Duncan and Liberal MP Dan McTeague also took up the issue , urging federal Environment Minister John Baird Duncan to find a way to okay off-road diesel for the time being, or at least relax enforcement of selling non-ULSD to the over-the-road market.

OTA said the government could introduce emergency legislation as it did recently to try to end the CN Rail strike.

“We’ve known from the outset that the regulatory solution presented challenges for the federal government but we had hoped that they would have been able to find a way to work with oil industry, which created this problem in the first place, to make it happen,” said OTA President David Bradley.

“Obviously we are disappointed that the federal government could not, or would not, find a way around this regulatory roadblock despite the support of the provincial government for such a measure.”

The shortage stems from a fire last month at Imperial Oil’s Nanticoke, Ont. petroleum refinery. All across Ontario, and even Quebec, truckers witnessed up to 20 percent price spikes and cardlocks of several major suppliers running out of diesel.

Many trucking carriers with their own storage tanks were warned by suppliers that they wouldn’t be able to get fill-ups for days, even a week.

While gasoline production capacity was ramped up this weekend Ontario Bradley told TodaysTrucking.com on Friday that he predicted the worst was yet to come for the diesel market this week.

“…We can only hope that the oil industry’s assurances are accurate and that things will stabilize soon. We have no other choice. For now it will be up to every trucker to find their own solution to the fuel shortage.”