Suncor Energy cyberattack hits Petro-Canada gas stations

A cyberattack is behind the Petro-Canada outage that has blocked customers from paying with credit cards at the pumps and logging into their accounts for several days.

Customers have had to pay cash at select locations since Friday. They have also been locked out of logging into their web and app accounts.

Customers asked to pay cash at a Petro-Canada gas station in Ontario (CTV News Ottawa). Petro-Canada’s parent company, Suncor Energy, released a statement Sunday, two days after the outage began.

“Suncor (TSX: SU) (NYSE: SU) has experienced a cyber security incident,” Suncor’s news release reads.

Online access to Petro-Points on the Petro-Canada app and website was still unavailable on Monday morning. In Toronto, debit and credit machines at the pumps of many gas stations continued to be non-operational.

“The company is taking measures and working with third-party experts to investigate and resolve the situation, and has notified appropriate authorities,” Suncor said.

Customers at a Petro-Canada gas station in Ontario were asked to pay with cash on June 24, 2023 (Tom Podolec). “At this time, we are not aware of any evidence that customer, supplier or employee data has been compromised or misused as a result of this situation.”

Frustrated customers who reached the end of their gas tanks with no cash in hand, or missed out on days of their car wash season pass expressed frustration on Twitter.

“Drove my last 6km in my tank to Petro-Canada to fill up just to find out you can't pay for gas because their system is down. Not to wait 3h for CAA to tow me 28km to next gas station never filling up at Petro-Canada again,” one driver wrote on Monday.

Another user wrote, “Petro Canada, what can we do with our car wash season pass? We wasted a few days worth of use! Would we be compensated for it?”

“We're working hard to resolve the issue and apologize for the inconvenience,” Petro-Canada said in a Tweet late on Saturday night.

The company has not provided a timeline of when the issue is expected to be resolved.