Industry Expert Believes N.S. Is Nearing Gas-Price Peak
HALIFAX–An industry expert believes Nova Scotia is nearing its peak when it comes to record-high gas prices.
Dan McTeague guesses the price at the pump could top out at $2.15 per litre for regular gasoline.
“What we’re looking at is, for next week or two, these are probably the highest numbers we’re going to see,” McTeague says.
Prices in Nova Scotia aren’t hitting the same highs as places like Vancouver or Montreal (where prices have recently been as high as $2.33 and $2.16 a liter, respectively) but McTeague says the province’s government-regulated market makes things complicated.
“In the rest of the country, where we don’t have regulated prices, people usually know two days in advance, right down to nine-tenths of a cent, what the price of gas is going to be. But, unfortunately, with regulated markets in Nova Scotia… there’s a lot of rules, and [they] have to figure out their own private playbook in order to figure out how they want to replicate market prices.”
While he expects prices to fall slightly over the summer, McTeague says there are other factors that could spur more increases.
“Should we start to see hurricanes in the Atlantic or the Gulf…Texas, anything like that could cause a hiccup in prices,” said McTeague.
The gas expert says Russia’s invasion plays a role in the price right now but our country’s trouble building pipelines hurts us as well.
“Canada made a commitment not to build any more pipelines, and to kill two that were proposed, including Energy East….both of those represent about 1.8 billion barrels of oil that could have made their way to the market,” he said.
Regular gasoline was priced near $2.10 a litre on May 19, while diesel was around $2.15. The regular weekly adjustment is set for Thursday night.
Steve MacArthur is the news director with CKHZ 103.5 in Halifax, a Huddle content partner.