A ten-cent hike at the Petro Canada location on 20th Avenue pushed fuel prices to 140.9 this morning (Wednesday), leading many to wonder if other gas stations will follow suit.
For the past little while, most stations have been at 129.9 cents a litre, while Costco remains a bit lower at 124.9.
Dan McTeague with Canadians for Affordable Energy told MyPGNow.com the spike will not get any worse.
“In the short term, that’s about as high as it’s going to get. I don’t see it getting higher in the next several days and it should be another week or two before the market goes to a readjustment or reassessment.”
“It costs gas stations a dollar-twenty-seven to buy their fuel and that is taxes in without a retail margin. That seems a little high, traditionally, the retail margin is between six and twelve cents, perhaps this is an outlier but for the time being there is no indication prices are going to get any higher.”
McTeague added BC drivers are paying 25 cents more per litre when they fill up due to the Carbon Tax and Low Carbon Fuel Standard.
“It’s pretty substantial, it’s an eye-popper. It’s 14-cents a litre so if people are upset paying a buck forty, imagine if you didn’t have that one tax you would be down to one-twenty-six and if BC didn’t have the Carbon Tax prices would be down to one-fifteen. All things considered, there is a cost to voting that way (NDP).”
“In essence, you are competing with California and that is why prices are stubbornly high. They are certainly more than some people have suggested and for that reason alone the existing Carbon Tax is about ten cents a litre while and the Low Carbon Fuel Standard is fourteen cents per litre – that’s a whopping difference in price.”
“Carbon credits under this regime run about four hundred and ten to four hundred and twenty dollars on average in the first quarter.”
In addition, the change over from lower-cost winter gasoline to the more expensive summer brand of fuel has already occurred and isn’t putting the dent into local fuel prices as first thought.
“It was very quiet because it happened on one of those days where prices had gone up a little bit and then they fell so the effect. You have been looking at summer blends of gasoline factored into the price of gasoline for the past four weeks.”
For a link to BC’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard, click here.