Gas is back into the ‘buck-eighties’ in Metro Vancouver after a jump in the price of regular overnight.
On Wednesday morning, many stations in the region were posting $1.839 per litre, which was up five cents, generally, from Tuesday.
Head petroleum analyst Patrick De Haan at GasBuddy.com had been expecting a three- to seven-cent increase as the price of crude oil has been rising — thanks, in part, to Washington, D.C.
“The parting shot from the Biden administration was to put sanctions on so-called ‘dark vessels’ that ship sanctioned oil from Russia and Iran. The fact those sanctions have now been amped up has led oil prices to start the year by surging. Oil is about $10 a barrel higher than where we were about a month ago,” De Haan told 1130 NewsRadio.
Will gas prices keep rising?
De Haan says there are some wildcard factors ahead, chiefly the incoming Trump administration in the U.S. and its threatened 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian goods, including gas and oil.
“It’s certainly very hard to predict exactly what could happen, because if those tariffs are implemented, it would make Canadian oil vastly more expensive in the US while making it cheaper, potentially, in Canada,” he explained.
“Although with the U.S. dollar being the currency of denomination for oil, it certainly could be complex with how this potentially backfires for the U.S. But it could make gas prices temporarily lower in Canada.”
However, De Haan says tariffs would also have a major impact on the broader economy, potentially slowing it down on both sides of the border virtually overnight.
“That could put us on the road to a potential recession. Canada and the U.S. are tied at the hip. So having tariffs implemented could be catastrophic in ways not imagined.”
And then there are the California wildfires and threats to oil and gas infrastructure.
“The wildfires have not influenced refineries yet, but they have caused several pipelines to be shut down. There isn’t yet an impact to be felt in BC and Vancouver, but there is the potential. With nine refineries in the state of California, some of them could be impacted by wildfires. That, in theory, could impact gas prices on Canada’s west coast. That’s something we’re keeping a very close eye on.”