Average price in province dips to 80 cents

At about 80 cents a litre as of Tuesday, the average price for gasoline in Alberta is at the lowest it’s been since February 2007.

“The fact that it’s gone down in the last two months suggests that it’s going to continue to go down another couple of months,” said Joseph Doucet, professor of energy policy for the University of Alberta.

According to Doucet, change in the price of crude oil is the most important reason for changes in gasoline prices, and that the affect is delayed. 

“The price that’s quoted today, that’s a price for actually December delivery of crude contracts,” he said. “That means the crude traded today won’t actually be delivered today and it has to go through pipelines and refineries to get to your gas station.”

Therefore, it’s reasonable to expect the price of gasoline to go down a few months later to reflect the drop in crude this last month, he said.

According to www.albertagasprices.com, the price of gasoline has been in a steep decline since it peaked at 136.7 cents per litre in mid-September. The average price across the country, at 84 cents per litre on Nov. 25, is consistently a few cents higher than Alberta’s.

To understand what affects crude oil prices requires knowledge of the energy industry, general economics, and geopolitics. “That’s almost more important than     anything,” Doucet said. “Understanding what’s happening in Venezuela with Hugo Chávez, understanding what’s happening in the Gulf Coast, that Saudi tanker that was pirated... all of these things have significant impact on the crude price.”

Roy MacInnis, an Edmonton man driving through Jasper Tuesday, said he was pleased to be paying 87.4 cents a litre at the Shell station on Connaught Drive, but previously high gas prices motivated him to park his truck and purchase a Toyota Corolla for its mileage.

“That’s the greenhouse thinking,” MacInnis said. “But still, gas companies are making too much money.”