The warning comes after months of record price fluctuations due to post-pandemic fuel demand and declining supply, and is further exacerbated by sanctions on Russian oil imposed in March. And while Canadians may have been accustomed to volatile price fluctuations in recent months, analysts say Easter weekend price spikes are paving the way for an even more unpredictable summer market. Prices in the greater Toronto area (GTA), for example, are set to skyrocket on Saturday, jumping from an average of $ 173.9 to $ 185.9 at most gas stations – representing a 23-minute rise in just 72 hours. . “An increase of twenty-three cents per liter in the last 72 hours; this is a rate I have never seen, it is unprecedented and it does not bode well for the summer,” said Dan McTeague, president of Canadians for Affordable Energy. CP24 Friday. McTeague says the jump is due in part to the shift from winter to summer gasoline – an annual event that usually raises prices. Winter gasoline uses butane, which is cheaper to produce and ignite engines faster at lower temperatures. Summer mixtures, on the other hand, use alkyl, materials that are most often found in high quality gas. This switch usually costs consumers five to eight cents more per liter. “The type of gasoline you get tends to change from April 15 to September 15. It has been around for 30 years. “There’s always a seven- or eight-minute premium associated with that,” McTeague explained, noting that areas like the GTA are likely to see an average of $ 1.80 to $ 1.90 on pumps during the summer months. “We will see, note my words, $ 2 a liter many days all summer this year.” McTeague says many factors are worsening the price of pumps, from the weak Canadian dollar and less investment in traditional fuel sources. However, he warns that summer prices could rise further if there are other outages in the production or distribution of fuel worldwide, such as a hurricane or pipeline outages. “We are in a new era,” he said. “The Canadian dollar is not responding to higher oil prices because of the fact that we are not building pipelines in markets that desperately need Canadian oil and we have taxes on taxes that have been levied; all of these things are contributing to a worsening situation.”
