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By Dylana Kneeshaw

SUMMER FUEL PRICES

Petroleum analysts expecting below average gas prices to last through summer

May 10, 2020 | 10:08 AM

KAMLOOPS — As Canada begins to ease some COVID-19 restrictions and more people get out on the roads, fuel pricing experts say the price of gas likely won’t shoot up to where it was last summer.

The last several weeks in British Columbia gas prices have be drastically lower than what drivers were paying at the pumps in 2019.

For example, according to Stats Canada, Vancouver’s average gas price was 169.0 in May of 2019, before hovering between 148.0 and 153.0 for the rest of the summer.

(Image Credit: Statistics Canada / Govt of Canada)

(For GasBuddy’s tracking of average gas prices, click here.)

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Coming up to the summer season where typically more drivers hit the roads, Patrick De Haan, GasBuddy’s head of petroleum analysis, says it’s difficult to predict how the next few months will be for fuel costs.

“Where we go from here largely is contingent on how quickly we recover, and how quickly motorists do return to the roads,” he says, “Obviously there has been a tremendous amount of job losses in North America over the last 6-8 weeks, and so while there will be some gasoline demand that comes back and has already come back. I don’t see gas prices fully going back up to where they were prior to this potentially for 6-12 months.”

Generally speaking, De Haan says prices may be about 20-30 cents a litre lower than they were last summer. However, if there is a dramatic improvement in the pandemic situation and more drivers get out on the roadways, then the prices could be raised.

“But based on what we see now, I think that’s extremely unlikely that we will see a drastic improvement that would have so many motorists hitting the roads this summer.”

De Haan adds that a slow rise in prices is expected, but he doubts they will return to record levels.