In a file picture, a motorist fill up at the gas pump in a gas station.
Photograph by: PHILIPPE HUGUEN , AFP/Getty Images
Gasoline prices are up sharply in Metro Vancouver, but market experts differ on whether they will rise further or fall.
“There’s nothing in the fundamentals that indicate the prices are going to continue to rise,” said Jason Parent, senior associate with MJ Ervin & Associates, a division of the London, Ont.-based Kent Group, which provides data, research, analysis and consulting services to the petroleum industry. He said the market tends to “overshoot,” followed by “a bit of a correction afterwards.
“I don’t expect it to stay where it is very long, maybe a week, and then you’ll see prices start coming down.”
In Vancouver, pump prices shot up early Friday to more than $1.51 per litre.
Nova Scotia drivers also saw a hefty increase, with average prices up to $1.37, an increase of 6.1 cents. Prices have risen more modestly in most of the Prairie provinces, but actually declined overnight Thursday in Manitoba and Newfoundland and Labrador.
Dan McTeague, the former federal MP and gas-price crusader who runs the website
tomorrowsgaspricetoday.com, argued that some analysts are predicting a 10-per-cent increase in pump prices in the U.S. over the next few weeks.
“Whatever happens in the States, you always have to add five to 10 per cent more.”
Parent noted there’s been a run on crude prices in recent weeks and cited the unrest in Egypt and Nigeria as having an effect on global oil prices.
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