"A little bit worse, before it gets better," Gas prices in Portage

Gas prices are back on the rise in Portage la Prairie and across the entire province.

PortageOnline reached out to GasBuddy.com to find out why, and Head of Petroleum Analysis, Patrick De Haan, said it has to do with what is happening to our neighbours to the south.

"Well, much of this is due to refinery issues that have affected refineries down in the U.S. Great Lakes and in the plain states," says De Haan. "Some of those refineries send gasoline into Canada, and much of the Canadian market has been pulled higher because of various refinery fires that have affected the ability of those refineries to produce gasoline. As a result, we have seen prices spike about $0.20 a litre in the last month."

He doesn't expect prices to reach $2/litre any time soon, but he does expect the prices to get a bit worse before they get better. He says the current hurricane season in certain areas does not help, not to mention the storms seen in the Maritimes recently. Once we get through this, he says we should see improvement.

"I think we'll get back to where we were prior to this, somewhere in the ballpark of $1.65 (per litre)," says De Haan. "That could take until the end of November to get back there. But then, I think, by the end of the year, we could be even below that a bit, so long as there are no new refinery issues. Certainly, this year, we have seen a handful of them. So, if everything goes well, we could be back below the $1.65 per litre mark by the end of the year."

The average price of gasoline in Manitoba is currently 185.1 cents per litre.