If you didn’t like the price of gasoline on April 1st, you won’t like what it costs today and you might hate it even more by Friday.
The B.C. carbon tax hike that kicked in on Monday was no April Fool’s Joke. It raised the price at the pumps by 3.3 cents.
And motorists might have noticed another nickel has been added to the cost per litre today.
Gas that was selling for $1.59.9 on Monday at Costco is now at $1.64.9, a price matched by the Shell station at Fifth and Tabor.
Most Prince George stations, like the Super Save Gas on Victoria Street, are priced at $167.2. The Canco station at First Avenue and George Street was selling gas at $1.69.9 Thursday morning.
Travelers driving to Vancouver will already see gas stations selling at $2.13 per litre after Thursday’s hike.
You’d be wise to fill up today because more price hikes are coming down the pipe, according to Dan McTeague of gaswizard.ca. McTeague predicted, in the Vancouver Sun, that there’s another five-cent -per-litre increase coming to British Columbia pumps on Friday.
“If you're already complaining at $2.07 a litre, you're not going to be happy about where we're going to be on Friday,” said McTeague.
Gas prices were already inching upward as the Easter long weekend approached which spiked the demand with more travelers on the roads. Refineries in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States which supply parts of B.C. are switching from winter gasoline mixtures to summer blends, which are more costly.
McTeague also cited British Petroleum’s Olympic pipeline that runs through Washington state will be undergoing maintenance, which will also limit supplies.
“Springtime gasoline has started to happen,” said McTeague .“The contract for that summer blend for gasoline is going through the roof.”
