Reuters beats competition by hours on major refinery outage

It seemed routine when a storm in northern Alberta caused power outages that briefly tripped off two of the Edmonton regions three refineries. But Reuters subscribers were first by a country mile to learn that Petro-Canadas plant suffered enough damage to curtail gasoline production for an indefinite period. Damage to the refinery`s catalytic cracker worsened an already-tight fuel supply situation in Western Canada, and forced Petro-Canada to seek alternate supplies for its retail and wholesale network. The outages were a factor cited for stronger North American crude and petroleum products prices that day. Reuters had the headlines in the morning, and Dow Jones did not match the story until late afternoon. Bloomberg was not sighted with a story.