LOWER MAINLAND (NEWS 1130) — It looks like we won’t be getting an early Christmas gift in the form of considerably cheaper gas.
Gas price analyst Dan McTeague with GasBuddy.com says he suspects a three- to four-cent decrease in prices will be coming soon, but not until early January.
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Prices haven’t fallen that far off recent peak in prices. He predicted prices would jump 17 cents last week after the Olympic pipeline shut down briefly and unexpectedly.
“We went up a total of 17 cents a litre, from 131.9 to 148.9, and I would have thought, by this point, prices would have come back down, but they’ve only dropped about half of that,” he says.
Prices for a litre of regular spotted by you:
In parts of Vancouver: 136.9 per litre
Around Richmond: 136.9 per litre
Around Abbotsford: 129.9 per litreIn Blaine: 3.19 US per gallon
Tweet us #gasprices you spot! pic.twitter.com/ugREn9uK5J
— NEWS 1130 Gas Tracker (@1130gastracker) December 24, 2018
Prices at the pumps south of the border, however, have been consistently lower. He points to ‘chronic shortages’ of gas in the region as one of the reasons the high prices continue here, as well as high taxes in the region.
“That’s really a function of the fact that Americans have the advantage of having those refineries in their backyard,” he says. “Of course it doesn’t help that you have the second highest prices on taxes being a contributing factor.”
RELATED: Gas prices jump after pipeline shutdown in Washington state
If you try buying gas in Blaine you’ll see it’s usually much cheaper there by comparison.
You can listen to NEWS 1130 for gas price updates at :59 past the hour, and on Twitter @1130gastracker.
The post No relief on high gas prices until January: analyst appeared first on NEWS 1130.