If you can, you may want to wait to fill your tank until Sunday.
That’s the advice of petroleum analyst Dan McTeague with GasBuddy.com, who is forecasting that Metro Vancouver gas prices will set another all-time record on Friday.
Last week, the price of gasoline already reached a new, all-time high in Metro Vancouver.
It reached $1.67.9 a litre at a gas station in Burnaby early Thursday morning in Coquitlam.
The persistent high prices include the new one-cent bump in the carbon tax and refineries’ switch to a pricier summer blend in recent weeks, McTeague said.
But McTeague said the continued upward pressure is a result of Metro Vancouver competing with the entire U.S. West Coast for gas amid refinery maintenance and shutdowns at six American facilities in Washington state and California.
“That’s the main reason why we see prices moving up as quickly as they are, not just here in Vancouver, where the problem is exaggerated by a constant (reliance) on external sources for most of our gasoline needs,” he said.
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McTeague said Washington’s Cherry Point refinery is expected to complete planned maintenance on Saturday, easing pressure on tight supply and potentially leading to as much as a two-cent drop in prices.
“There seems to be light at the end of the tunnel,” he said.
McTeague also weighed in on the possibility of Alberta “turning off the taps” of gasoline should Jason Kenney be elected premier.
He said that in such a situation, prices could climb by 20 to 25 cents per litre with highs potentially beginning to enter the $2 per litre realm.