Drivers in Metro Vancouver saw a noticeable overnight dip in gas prices, waking up to a six-cent drop.
Most prices around Metro Vancouver are hovering around $2.08.9, and can be as low as $2.04.9 in Richmond, according to GasBuddy.
Another five-cent drop is expected to hit the region on Friday, according to petroleum expert Dan McTeague, president of Canadians for Affordable Energy.
“If you wait until midnight tonight, we are going to see (another) net decrease of five cents a litre, so top prices in Metro Vancouver will be $2.05.9 or less,” McTeague said on Thursday.
“(Prices) will be almost back to where we were about a week-and-a-half ago when it zoomed up to $2.20 a litre.”
More savings could be on the way as well with the Trans Mountain expansion pipeline now being operational.
“I would expect the prices to drop anywhere from 10 and 25 cents, but with a pretty wide error bar on that because we don’t know quite where things are going to settle,” University of Calgary economics professor Kent Fellow told Global News.
Fellow said that up until nine years ago, fuel prices in the Lower Mainland and Edmonton tended to track together, but rule changes and constrained volume on the Trans Mountain pipeline halted it as an avenue of delivery for gasoline and diesel. That meant B.C. buying more refined fuel that was shipped by rail or came from the United States, resulting in higher prices.
“With Trans Mountain being completed, we are going to see an increase in tolls on that pipeline, they are going to jump a little bit, but I think there is a lot of economic logic to the theory that the relaxation of the constraint … is actually going to lead to lower costs,” Fellow said.
“Maybe not pre-2015 costs, but I would expect to see the prices in Vancouver a lot closer to the prices in, say, Edmonton.”
Fellow said he expected those effects to be felt by late spring or early summer.
McTeague added that the cost of importing U.S. fuel could also fall in the long term, as the increased export of Canadian oil at a higher price through the Trans Mountain pipeline boosts the value of the Canadian dollar.
— With files from Simon Little