GTA gas prices to jump 12 cents over next two days
· Toronto Sun
Drivers in the Greater Toronto Area are being hit in the wallet at the pumps.
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Gas prices are expected to rise six cents at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, going from 137.9 cents/litre to an average of 143.9 cents/litre at local stations, according to Dan McTeague, president of Canadians for Affordable Energy .
Another six-cents-a-litre increase is then expected on Thursday, taking the price to 149.9 cents/litre in the GTA.
Diesel to skyrocket
And if that wasn’t enough, diesel prices will soar 13 cents a litre on Wednesday and another 12, maybe 13 cents on Thursday, he said.
It’s the diesel increase that has McTeague “nervous,” as he notes it affects the price of everything.
“It’s up 13 cents a litre (Wednesday), and by the looks of it, another 12 or 13 cents on Thursday,” he told the Sun on Tuesday, adding that it’s not just confined to the GTA or even Ontario.
“This is right across the country,” he said.
“Diesel’s the global workhorse. It’s the most important fuel. It’s more important than gasoline or anything else,” McTeague explained.
“The chopping off of supply from the Strait of Hormuz isn’t just about the one-third [of the world’s oil tankers that access the waterway controlled by Iran]. It’s also about countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates and even the refineries in those regions that can’t produce now without the threat of being hit by a missile.”
Don’t just blame Trump
And while many are people are quick to blame U.S. President Donald Trump, who stated the Iran conflict could stretch into a month or longer, McTeague points out the elephant in the room: Pipelines.
“It’s also another factor that most Canadians don’t like to talk about because they voted with their elbows up,” he said. “You block pipelines, you also affect the Canadian dollar.”
McTeague noted that the Canadian dollar is lagging, having lost a penny’s value in the past couple of days.
“Normally in the past when we’ve seen these conflicts, any of the Gulf Wars, any of the conflicts where there has been a risk premium, the Canadian dollar increased in value versus the U.S. greenback because we could sell more oil to meet that demand, therefore Canadian oil was in high demand and we had the potential for selling to the rest of the world, at least selling to the United States,” he detailed.
Not so anymore.
“It’s a globally traded product and we don’t have that anymore because we like blocking pipelines in Canada, we like putting emissions caps on it,” he said sarcastically.
Once upon a time…
McTeague also noted how in the 2008 lead-up to the global crisis the following year, the price would go up a couple of dollars a barrel but “the Canadian dollar would mitigate or at least absorb two-thirds of that increase so Canadians didn’t get hit as hard as other partners around the world. That doesn’t exist anymore.”
He continued: “This is going to have an impact, it’s going to leave a mark. Part of that mark is directly connected to a weak Canadian dollar that isn’t responding to the higher energy price because we have no energy that we can offer the rest of the world.”
McTeague added: “An energy-rich nation like Canada that could be a solution now finds itself sidelined as a result of its woke policies, of its ESG policies over the past decade and those are going to come back to pinch us in the pocketbook.”
As far as the increase in gas prices this week goes, it’ll be day to day, depending on how things continue to play out in the Middle East, he noted.
“But it leads back to energy,” McTeague said. “You fool around with energy, its availability, its reliability, you damage its affordability in so many ways that people can’t possibly imagine.”