Vancouverites filling up got a shock Wednesday morning as the price of gas hit $1.50. Photo Dan Toulgoet
If you were shocked at paying $1.50 for gas in Vancouver this morning you could be in for an even bigger surprise this summer.
Analyst Dan McTeague, with GasBuddy.com, is predicting the price of gas could hit $1.60 in Metro Vancouver this summer.
“I have a hint that we will see days in 2018 this summer, sometime between the beginning of May and the end of September, where we could hit $1.60 a litre,” he said in a phone interview. “It won’t be for a long period of time but if all the plants line up the way they have just in the last couple of weeks to give us $1.50 at a low demand season and a low price season, the fact that we’re 17-18 cents above where we were this time last year, it’s really not much of a stretch to imagine another nine cents being added at some point during the summer.”
McTeague attributed this week’s spike in prices mainly to a shortage due to the shutdown of the Parkland refinery in Burnaby, which has been shut down for spring maintenance since early February. Four U.S. refineries have been making up the shortfall.
“But it’s a fairly tight market. Two of those four refineries announced just last week that they too are going into spring maintenance and aren’t going to wait for Parkland to get its act together,” McTeague said. “So that sent prices skyrocketing on the spot market.”
The gas shortage is coupled with that fact that the Canadian dollar has dropped about seven cents in the past four weeks and prices in the Lower Mainland also have the added 1.22-cent B.C. carbon tax plus the 11-cent TransLink tax.
McTeague is predicting the price of gas will go down to $1.499 Thursday. “Best case scenario is we’ll see another penny drop Friday, or it could stay neutral, and will stay that way until at least Saturday.”
He said gas prices are typically lowest in January, February and the beginning of March because demand is lower and winter blend gas is cheaper. By law, refineries and gas stations must sell summer blend gas, which costs about four cents a litre more, starting by April 15.
If you think Vancouver’s gas prices are on the high side, you’d be right.
“We’re number one by a long shot,” McTeague said. “No one’s even close.”
Victoria typically comes in second, and prices there are usually 8.5 cents cheaper than Metro Vancouver.
The region not only has the highest gas prices in the country, but all of North America.
“I would actually argue in all of the Western Hemisphere with the exception of some island in the Caribbean,” he said.
Los Angeles is an area typically known for its high gas prices, McTeague said, because the city requires a special blend to combat smog issues. Gas in L.A. today is $3.45 a gallon while gas in Vancouver is $5.71 a gallon.
@JessicaEKerr
jkerr@vancourier.com
