Drivers should wait until Sunday or even Monday to fill up their tanks, according to one industry analyst.
Dan McTeague with the Canadians for Affordable Energy told CP24 that the price of gas will go up nine cents a litre on Saturday to 182.9.
It will, however, drop five to seven cents a litre to 175.9 on Sunday and fall further by 11 cents on Monday to 164.9 as the temporary suspension of the federal fuel excise tax on gas and diesel takes effect.
Prime Minister Mark Carney announced the move earlier this week.
According to the federal government, the tax suspension is expected to reduce the cost of gas by 10 cents per litre on regular gas and by four cents on diesel. It will remain in effect until Sept. 7.
McTeague said the price of diesel is expected to dip by about 23 cents a litre by Monday morning.
“If that doesn’t show up by Monday morning, it’s definitely going to show up at some point throughout the week. We’ll be back to $1.85, $1.86 for diesel, and that’s a price we haven’t paid since the early days of this war.
On Friday, oil prices dropped back to where they were in the early days of the Iran war after Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the Strait of Hormuz is open again for commercial tankers carrying crude from the Persian Gulf to customers worldwide.
McTeague said while the reopening of the strait is critical and welcome news, it’ll take months to get the supply back up again.
“This is not a demand crunch. This is a supply crunch,” he said, adding that the issue is very hard to fix.
“The reality is that we’ve done very little in the way of paying attention to the lingering long-term effect of a supply shock on this scale.”
McTeague says the war has resulted in the “worst energy crisis” the world has ever seen.
“I think the full totality it hasn’t been quite felt yet. We’re going to still see a lot of shortages in the world despite what’s happened,” he said.
With files from CTV News’ Stephanie Ha and The Associated Press
