Rising gas prices concerning Maritime motorists

Many Maritimers are feeling the pinch at gas pumps.

With 30 tractors on the roster for storm clean up, Rick Lambert from Moncton, N.B., says it costs them about $250 to $300 a day in fuel, per tractor, after a big snow fall.

“It’s a necessity. We have so many customers here in town that we have no choice,” he said while fueling up Friday morning.

Like many others, the high price at the pump isn’t something he can just ignore.

“They just seem to be going back up again and it is what it is. I mean the price of fuel is something that everybody is hurting over these days,” he said.

Experts say historically, prices are up.

“Prices now up 10 c/l from where we were a month ago. New Brunswick at about $165/litre on average. It’s about 11 cents a litre higher than a year ago,” said Patrick De Haan, the head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy.

De Haan adds the hike at the pump is being seen across Canada and most notably in coastal communities with crude oil prices driving a lot of the increases.

“This tends to be the time of year, late winter, when prices are amongst the lowest, so this is not setting us up for a favourable start to the year,” he said.

In New Brunswick the maximum price for regular self-serve gasoline is 169.1 cents per litre as of Friday.

In Nova Scotia, prices went down slightly to 165.3 cents per litre for the minimum and Prince Edward Island tops the chart with a minimum of 175.0 cents per litre heading into the weekend.

Diesel prices, on the other hand, are causing an even bigger pinch.

New Brunswick’s maximum price is 198.7 cents per litre, Nova Scotia is at 195.9 cents per litre and PEI is sitting at 203.7 cents per litre.

“Some of this is not just because of the high tax we have on fuel, but also a weaker Canadian dollar,” said Canadians for Affordable Energy president Dan McTeague.

“This time last year 130 pennies bought a U.S. dollar, today it’s 143/144 that’s adding an extra two or three cents a litre on top of the taxes that we’ve seen so it’s making a bad situation certainly worse.”

In general, McTeague says diesel prices typically race ahead of gasoline during the colder months due to the weather and demand, but it will switch back.

In the coming months, Canadians will see another increase in Carbon Tax, the switch from winter to summer gasoline and a higher demand overall which tends to push prices.

“With the yearly increase in Carbon Taxes that’s been perennial for the last five-to-10 years, it’s been almost a tradition at this point that filling your tank up is more painful every year, so hopefully they’ll be some relief for Canadians but it may get worse before it gets better,” said De Haan.

There’s also concern right now over what Trump’s proposed tariffs could bring to Canadian gas stations.

“I’m a senior on a fixed income, so it is a worry for sure,” said Halifax resident Pat Goodall.

Moncton’s Corinna Fagan adds, “We’re going to have some serious issues if he follows through with his threats as far as I’m concerned. I’m not looking forward to it.”

At this point, experts say exactly how tariffs are going to impact gasoline prices and by how much is unknown, but McTeague says Canada does have some leverage.

“It’s important that the Americans understand, they cannot produce diesel with the gasoline or with the oil that they produce. The light, tight, shale oil is great for gasoline, terrible for diesel. They need the 4.4M barrels of oil from Canada every day,” he said.

He believes Trump’s Feb. 1 date will bring a declaration on tariffs giving Canada a few months to iron out what happens next.

“I know that there’s some statements that are going back and forth and we’re panicking about this and we have good reason too because there’s a lot of catch up here on a number of fronts. But to sift through all of this, I don’t think it’s in America’s interest, much less Canada’s interest, to have this thing imposed like a ton of bricks on Feb. 1,” he added.