Record-high gas prices to come this weekend
Posted Jun 13, 2014 04:05:20 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
OTTAWA — The price of gas in Ottawa is expected to rise at least two cents per litre tonight, sending the average price at the pump to a dizzying new high.
En-Pro predicts prices will rise to 140.9 cents per litre in the capital — a high never before seen, not even when 40 per cent of North American refineries were taken offline by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
“This is all really based on traders on Wall Street guessing that something is going to go wrong in Iraq,” said Roger McKnight, chief petroleum analyst with En-Pro International. “It’s got nothing to do with supply-and-demand in North America.”
Speculators are nervous that al-Qaida-inspired militants, who have taken territory in northern Iraq, could threaten and capture oilfields and refineries in southern Iraq.
“The further south the militants go in Iraq, the further north your prices are going to go at the pump,” McKnight said.
McKnight says whether gas prices come down depends heavily on what the U.S. is willing to do, if anything, about Iraq.
U.S. President Barack Obama has already stated that he will not send American troops back into Iraq, but that he is looking at other options to deal with the fast-moving insurgency.
