Vancouver now has the highest gas prices in North America

Move over red hot real estate market, Vancouver now has another unwanted distinction to its name.

Yes, after hikes on Easter Monday our city now has the distinction of having the highest gas prices in North America, and they won’t go down anytime soon.

Prices across Metro Vancouver are averaging about $1.15 per litre, with Los Angeles trailing behind us at around a dollar a litre, according to Dan McTeague with GasBuddy.com. Vancouver’s new badge of honour is hardly surprising, he says.

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“Traditionally we had high prices – you have a combination of municipal taxes, you have, of course, carbon tax, and many other taxes – but we are also net importers of gasoline in Vancouver,” McTeague tells Vancity Buzz. “Although we have a refinery, it doesn’t produce enough to satisfy our domestic needs.”

For all those reasons, plus the transition into summer gas prices, Vancouver drivers will likely be paying more at the pump in the short term.

“Winter gasoline, which is much cheaper to make, will be replaced with much more expensive to make summer blended gasoline. That’s usually good for a three or four cent-a-litre increase and we could see prices moving back into the 120.9 range in the next four to seven days,” McTeague says.

For the record, the cheapest place to buy gas in Metro Vancouver at the moment is the Costco in Port Coquitlam – gas is just 105.9 cents a litre.