VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Thanks to high demand and somewhat low supply, you can expect the price of gas to begin climbing as we head into the summer driving season.
It’s not expected to come down until the fall at the earliest, says gas analyst Michael Ervin.
Around the Lower Mainland, the price jumped overnight by almost $0.10 to nearly $1.40 a litre at some stations.
“Barring any unforseen circumstances such as refinery outages, we are likely to see fairly stable prices. So, the price you see today there is probably not going to go up any more other than something that might be unpredictable.”
To give you some perspective, the average price of gas across the country is $1.19 a litre, while it’s $1.36 a litre in BC. Ervin notes partly because we pay the most taxes on fuel in Canada.
“If you look at the four elements that really contribute to gasoline prices — taxes, crude oil prices, refiner mark-up and then retailer mark-up — the mark-up by the retailer is typically the least of all those four. In BC, certainly taxes are the single biggest component of the pump price,” he explains.
He thinks prices will drop by about a dime by September.