Carbon charges, chaotic markets drive N.B. fuel prices to highest in region
CBC
Kevin Nicolle spends several hundred dollars a week on fuel to run his car wash and mobile power washing business in Saint John.
He marvels at the up-and-down swings in prices for gasoline and diesel he has been encountering multiple times a week.
Over the weekend, the trend was upward.
"It's terrible," said Nicolle. "But I mean what can you do. There's nothing you really can do."
Late last week, trading in gasoline markets in New York bumped up six cents. In response, New Brunswick — alone among Maritime provinces — on Sunday lifted the ceiling on what consumers can be charged by gasoline retailers.
It was the third increase in the province in four days.
On Thursday, prices jumped during normal weekly price setting by the New Brunswick Energy and Utilities Board.
On Friday, there was an increase in federally mandated carbon charges that hit New Brunswick but left consumers in Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia untouched.
Then the special market-triggered increase came on Sunday.
On gasoline, it totalled 19.6 cents in increases in four days, and by Monday morning legal maximum gasoline prices in New Brunswick had climbed nearly 14 cents per litre higher than in Nova Scotia. Diesel prices were a record 29 cents more.
Prince Edward Island price advantages over New Brunswick are similar.
"I don't understand that," said Nicolle, who is baffled by the differences, but has little choice other than to pay up.
"It's hard to do these days, but you've got to do it.… A man's got to make a living."
Dramatic lurches in pricing in New Brunswick, up and down, are caused by rigid rules in the operation of its petroleum price regulation system. They require changes in New York trading markets of six cents or more to be passed through to consumers within a little more than a day.