$2.23! Metro Vancouver gas prices soar to new highs on weekend

Metro Vancouver gas prices jumped again on Mother's Day weekend to hitherto unseen heights, reaching about $2.23 a litre at some stations.

Those increases come just a day after records of around $2.17 were set on Friday.

And there's no price relief in sight, warned energy expert Werner Antweiler, an associate professor at UBC's Sauder School of Business.

Antweiler said there is a complex set of pressures on gas prices around the world, including the war in Ukraine and sanctions on Russian oil, which normally accounts for upward of 10 per cent of the global supply.

Those strains on supply come while the price of crude oil is already high, creeping up to $110 a barrel in the past few weeks.

But Antweiler blamed some uniquely local factors for making the prices at the pump in Metro Vancouver among the highest on the planet.

For one, the Canadian dollar is usually considered a reliable petrocurrency on the world market, providing a buffer against rising crude prices. But the war has driven most investors to the U.S. dollar as a safe haven, not the Canadian dollar.

And local supply is also constrained. The Lower Mainland gets most of its gas from Alberta refineries via the Trans Mountain pipeline. But that pipeline is seeing “a lot of excess demand,” Antweiler said.

“It's simply not keeping up because it's fully utilized and is also shipping oil overseas.”

So the refinery margin — that is, the amount above the wholesale price tacked on by the facility processing and transporting the oil — is normally around 40 to 42 cents in Metro Vancouver. Recently, with the supply pressures, that's been hovering around 60 to 62 cents, said Antweiler.

That margin increase caused by the supply crunch goes directly to the price you see at the pump.