High gas prices spark Churchill, Arctic Gateway clash

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This article was published 31/07/2019 (2484 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — The Town of Churchill is accusing the new owners of Manitoba’s northern port and railway of ripping off residents at the gas pump.

The company, Arctic Gateway, has countered, saying it is keeping fuel prices high to subsidize upgrades to the community.

“Churchill residents cannot be forced to continue to pay these high fuel costs,” reads a Monday letter signed by Mayor Mike Spence to Arctic Gateway, and obtained by the Free Press.

The northern town of 800 believes the company is pocketing 40 extra cents per litre, which it calls “unacceptable.”

Arctic Gateway took over the Hudson Bay Railway and Port of Churchill in August 2018, after May 2017 floods washed out the rail line.

Gas at the town’s only pump cost $1.70/L before the washout, but rose to $2.22/L, due to the cost of bringing in fuel on a barge from Quebec.

The railway was repaired in November 2018, and has been transporting fuel as of this spring, when the tank farm’s supply of gasoline that already arrived by boat had been used up.

While local retailer North West Company has lowered the cost of many groceries to their former price, the cost of gas hasn’t budged.

Spence said this has been “a significant issue that has been raised with Arctic Gateway on multiple occasions, both verbally and via email, and yet it remains unresolved.”

The federal Liberals helped broker Arctic Gateway, as a way to tie Indigenous communities along the line with Toronto financier Fairfax and Saskatchewan grain giant AGT Foods, and transferring ownership of Churchill’s assets from Denver-based Omnitrax.

The letter notes Ottawa put up a decade of subsidies to get the port and railway profitable and purchased the fuel reserves Omnitrax had already brought up.

However, Arctic Gateway spokesman Murad al-Katib said his firm is using the revenue to spruce up area infrastructure, so it can attract more business.

“In the pursuit of the long-term sustainability of this infrastructure, we need operations to be commercially viable and, at this early juncture, they are not,” al-Katib wrote, hinting this might eventually lead to a second gas vendor in the town.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca

Town of Churchill letter to Arctic Gateway on fuel prices