Record gasoline price slams Vancouver

Bloomberg

A political brawl between British Columbia and Alberta over a stalled pipeline expansion is being blamed for handing Vancouver a somewhat dubious municipal distinction.
The city recently recorded the highest retail gasoline price on record for a major North America metro, according to GasBuddy, a motor-fuel pricing website. The price hit almost $4.80 a gallon (C$1.70 a liter), a bit higher than the $4 a gallon seen in Los Angeles, traditionally one of the most expensive US markets.
A series of refinery shutdowns along the West Coast of North American have sent pump prices surging from San Diego to Seattle. But Vancouver was hit hardest at a time when its provincial leaders are locked in a duel with oil-rich Alberta over an expansion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline. “If you want to keep blocking pipelines, than you can expect to continue to pay through the nose at the hose,” said Dan McTeague, a senior petroleum analyst at Gas Buddy. The expansion would allow as much as 50,000 more barrels a day of gas and diesel to flow into the Vancouver area, he said. “No city has ever hit that high,” McTeague said.
Marc Lee, a BC-based senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alte- rnatives, said in a note that Alberta’s refiners are using any excuse from routine maintenance to bad weather to boost prices. “Companies are charging higher prices because they can get away with it,” he said in a note titled “Turn off the taps? Alberta already has Vancouver over a barrel.”
Vancouver, Canada’s third-largest city, hosts just one 52,000 barrel-a-day refinery and must rely on limited gasoline shipments across Rocky Mountains from Albe-rta and imports from fuel plants in Washington state. Taxes add to the problem as they exceed 50 Canadian cents a liter to fuel bought in the city, McTeague said.
The cost of living has long been an explosive issue in Vancouver, which has the highest home prices with some of the lowest wages of Canada’s biggest cities. Public outrage over affordability helped Premier John Horgan’s New Democratic Party take power in 2017, ending 16 years of Liberal Party rule.
“This line up to get you GAS is brought to you by John Horgan,” screams a yellow and white billboard going up at a Canada-US border crossing south of Vancouver where drivers have been crossing to fill up in Washington state, where gasoline is cheaper.