High gas cost at home driving motorists south
They travel miles and idle at border to beat $1.50/litre fuel at B.C. pumps
The traffic, the roads, the border lineup, nothing stops a significant number of drivers from crossing into Washington state to fill up their tanks with cheap American gasoline.
“I’d say 90 per cent of the B.C. plates driving through are coming for gas,” a member of U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Tuesday.
“Some of them say they ’ve driven for 40 minutes and then they’ve been idling for an hour (waiting to pass through customs).”
It’s always been thus, but with gas prices in Vancouver at $1.50 a litre, going to Bellingham, Wash., where gas is 90 cents a litre, in Canadian pennies, is pretty attractive.
In other words, you save almost $50 every time you fill an 80-litre tank in Bellingham instead of Metro Vancouver, even with a 77-cent Loonie.
“We try to come here and fill up every week if we can,” Wendy Baskin said as she filled her Honda Odyssey at the Bellis Fair Costco in Bellingham. “We live in White Rock, it’s so easy to jump down here. Even with the exchange rate, we save so much money.”
Coming from further afield, Van Fabbro said he gets upset at the price per litre in Burnaby.
“I’m ticked off,” he said after filling his Mazda 3.
“Where I live it’s a bit hard getting here more than every two or three months, I should do it more often, but it is 100-per-cent worthwhile.”
Washington state gas prices aren’t even that cheap relative to the rest of the U.S.
Depending on fluctuations, a gallon of gas in Bellingham can be anywhere from 20-per-cent higher than the U.S. average, according to GasBuddy, which publishes realtime gas prices from all over North America.
Yet pump prices in Bellingham are a steal compared with the dizzying dollar heights a litre of gas in Vancouver occupies.
Blame taxes, lack of refining and pipeline capability, and a high markup, said Toronto-based Dan McTeague, senior petroleum analyst with GasBuddy.
“Metro Vancouver has the highest gas prices in North America,” he said. “I would say in the Western Hemisphere, except there are some islands in the Caribbean. But in Canada, the United States and Mexico, you’re it. A 60-cent difference ( between the price of a litre in Vancouver and Bellingham) is eyepopping, nothing short of that.”
About 40 per cent of the gas sold in Metro comes from Parkland refinery in Burnaby. Another 40 per cent comes via Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline and the rest is supplied by U.S. refineries.
“There is a crimp on supplies in the Pacific Northwest and we’re already in trouble in the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island,” McTeague said. “There is not enough supply to go around. If you want to see a shortage, this is what a shortage looks like.”
On top of a supply shortage, federal, provincial and transit taxes add up to 49.3 cents on every litre. The tax on gas in Washington state is 23 cents a litre. Those differences go a long way to explaining why, in January alone, 903,679 cars crossed into the U.S. at the Peace Arch, Pacific Highway, Aldergrove and Sumas border crossings, according to the Border Policy Research Institute at Western Washington University.
That’s the highest January total since 2015.
Don’t hold your breath, either, waiting for things to improve, McTeague said, prices will probably start creeping up yet again by April.
“Wait until summer,” he said. “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
There is a crimp on supplies in the Pacific Northwest and we’re already in trouble in the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island.