Iran war only part of jet fuel shortage problems, says Prince George expert

“In the short term, things like jet fuel are part of changing how we do things, not for the better. Globalization gave us the most amount of stuff as cheaply as possible. The world we’re moving into, there’s more scarcity, there’s less availability, there’s higher pricing. It’s not an upgrade, but it is our new reality,” Scott said.

Scott said the globalized economy really took shape following World War II, when he says the United States “basically guaranteed,” the freedom of the seas, ensuring you could move any product safely without fear of getting it seized, so long as you were a part of the Western Alliance. However, as a more globalized economy took shape, he says that came with pushback.

“That worked up until about 2010. By 2010-2012, it was clear that there were huge prices to people whose jobs were lost, so you started having this pushback saying, ‘look, we can’t keep competing with anything as cheap as you can get it anywhere in the world,’ so you started having more pressure for regionalization. The warning was when that pressure gets hard enough, the globalized system is going to break. We’re now in a system in which it is doing that, has been since about 2022-2024, but getting quicker and quicker escalation,” Scott said.

“As freedom of the seas is now over and vessels are being seized by various countries, including the U.S., we’re going to find that the stuff we took for granted is less available and more expensive than it was during a globalized economy,” Scott continued.

What does this all mean for Prince George and northern B.C. travellers? The President and CEO of the Prince George Airport Authority Geoff Ritchie says local passenger numbers remain strong, but adaptations may take place as airlines navigate fuel cost pressures.

“We’re seeing some adaptation in the schedule that may or may not happen going forward. What remains to be seen is how long that takes and how much of the system actually absorbs that increased fuel pricing,” Ritchie said.

Airports don’t control airline decisions, meaning Ritchie can’t say what types of changes we would see, if any, but says airlines are watching these costs daily and adjusting accordingly. However, he reassures local travellers that you will still have the same options as before, but it may look a bit different.

“For example, if you want to go to Toronto, but your favourite route is to go to Vancouver in an early morning flight or a mid-day flight, maybe that flight option is not available that day, but there’s still other ways you can get within the network to get you to Toronto for the same time and destination,” he said.

“The ability that we have here, which is really interesting, is that we’ve had an increase in capacity. In 2025 there was an extra 6% of available seats across the network. That’s remained, so there’s still opportunity. How that translates into actual ticket prices remains to be seen, and we as an airport have zero control over that,” Ritchie continued.

On ticket prices, Ritchie says one of the best ways you can try to make travel more affordable is to book your trips 90 days away, as this will give you favourable prices in an algorithm that sees little to no human involvement. As far as the root issue of the jet fuel shortage is concerned, Scott says that even if the Iran war were to end immediately, it will still take time to get that lost fuel back online.

“If shooting stopped tomorrow, you’re probably talking the better part of a year before all of the capacity that has stopped producing came back online. Everybody shut their products down, and there’s simply not enough skilled workers to bring every single refinery in the Middle East back up to running at the same time,” Scott said.

As far as the globalization angle is concerned, Scott adds Canada could create its own refining capacity to turn its oil into refined fuel, a move that would bring several economic benefits but also serious downsides.

“Stop sending stuff over to China or India or wherever it is being refined so that they can turn around and sell us back a much higher-value product. Refine it here. But that means taking all of the downsides of refining: the pollution, the drawing down heavily on energy grids, the skilled labour that you need. You have to actually have the capacity to refine it,” Scott said.

The Global Affairs Canada statement also advised travel insurance to protect against sudden cancellations and interruptions.

by Tommy Osborne

Iran war only part of jet fuel shortage problems, says Prince George expert

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