The flooding that’s hit Houston, Texas, in the wake of Hurricane Harvey could affect prices at the gas pumps in Metro Vancouver.
Houston is the oil and gas business hub of the United States and the flooding has already affected production in the country.
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Online price tracker Gas Buddy, is predicting the already high prices in Metro Vancouver could jump by four to five cents a litre.
Senior Petroleum Analyst Dan McTeague says a number of refineries have either shut down or are flooded because of the natural disaster.
“It looks like about 25 per cent of total U.S. gasoline production is likely at risk. We’ll probably get a better assessment Tuesday as to how many and how long they will be offline – no doubt that that will impact total U.S. supply and although it’s a far distance here from Vancouver or the Pacific Northwest, we can see what happens when there’s a run on supply.”
He says there was a 12 cent per litre increase in prices following Hurricane Ike in 2008.
Texas normally pumps out 5.6 million barrels of oil a day but due to the weather conditions, the state is now only able to produce about three million barrels a day.
Officials released more water from Houston-area reservoirs overwhelmed by now tropical storm Harvey early Monday in a move aimed at protecting the city’s downtown from devastating floods but that could still endanger thousands of homes, even as the fourth-largest city in the United States braced for more rain.
— With files from The Associated Press and CKNW