By Bloomberg – Re-Blogged From Newsmax
Vancouver sits less than 750 miles from the Canadian oil sands but it may as well be on another continent for vehicle drivers.
Gasoline prices in the Pacific Coast city hit C$1.62 a liter ($4.77 a gallon) on Monday, the highest in North America, according to Dan McTeague, a senior petroleum analyst at GasBuddy, which collects real-time fuel prices from more than 140,000 gas stations on the continent.
Vancouverites are paying about a third more than drivers in Honolulu, more than in the Cayman Islands which doesn’t have a single refinery and imports fuel on barges. More, in fact, than any other major oil-producing country except Norway, which also heavily taxes fuel.
Vancouver is the biggest city in British Columbia. The province imports roughly 60 percent of its refined fuels from oil-rich Alberta, another 10 percent from U.S. refineries across the border, and constrained transportation capacity has long meant the city pays among the highest fuel prices in the nation.
B.C.’s biggest refinery — Parkland Fuel Corp.’s Burnaby plant which accounts for a quarter of the province’s transportation fuel — underwent a once-in-a-decade maintenance overhaul and only just resumed operations on April 9. About 35 percent of Washington state’s refining capacity is offline, according to Bloomberg data, and a weakening loonie makes U.S. imports more expensive. Wholesale prices in the Pacific Northwest region are up 20 cents a gallon since April 9, according to GasBuddy’s McTeague.
Then there’s taxes.
“Vancouver’s a strange combination — it has both high fuel costs and high taxes,” said Bowes. “That’s what makes it so expensive.”
