Gasoline prices are on the rise again after a period of below-cost selling in Sarnia.
The price for regular gas in the city actually dipped below 80 cents a litre, to 78 cents earlier this week, before climbing to 93 cents.
Dan McTeague, a senior petroleum analyst at GasBuddy.com, said another province-wide hike of about seven cents a litre is coming Friday.
"That's because refineries are passing on a hike of about 6.2 cents a litre that will also mean, with HST and rounding, seven cents a litre," said McTeague. "There may actually be some retailers who restore their retail margins, that's the big difference you see at a lot of gas stations, you look at the Gas Buddy website and see that many stations have a five to seven cent variation."
McTeague said there's been a glut of gasoline in North America.
"A move toward liquidation that started on January 20 where we saw prices drop dramatically has come to an end, especially given that U.S. northeast refineries are going into stronger modes of maintenance and seasonal turnarounds. So with 30 per cent of them offline, it's creating a bit of a supply crunch so that's why prices have started to rise, unfortunately back to their normal refinery margin levels."
McTeague doesn't rule out lower prices again in the future but expects the best case scenario, if some stations choose to sell below cost, would be a price around 85 cents a litre.
-With files from Dave Dentinger