Motorists have encountered a jump of nearly 15 cents per litre in the price of regular gasoline this month and experts believe the upward trend will likely continue as summer approaches.

“It’s not just here in Calgary or across the province or across the country, globally this is being felt everywhere,” explained Dan McTeague, a senior petroleum analyst at GasBuddy.com. “Oil has gone up from $42 a barrel to $60 a barrel. That’s probably the single largest increase in energy commodities we’ve seen in the first three months of the year, going back 17 years. In other words, the first quarter has never seen oil rally like that, much of it to do with demand shrinking supplies of only not just around the world with OPEC cutting back but even here in Alberta with our curtailment of 300,000 barrels.”

McTeague says gas prices in the prairie provinces are reflective of the fluctuations in the U.S. Midwest market, especially Chicago, which has seen a 45 cent per gallon increase in March.

“Higher energy prices, the likes of which we saw last year, are back in vogue and are likely to go higher,” said McTeague. “It’s going to be an expensive summer likely adding an additional 10 cents due to demand and other circumstances. We could see prices moving to the $1.30 to the $1.35 range that would mean prices that are on par with what we saw last summer.”  

Gas prices are expected to continue to increase in the coming months but not as dramatically as the recent spikes experienced over the last three months and McTeague says there are number of factors contributing to the increase.

“Continued weakness in the Canadian dollar, a strong U.S. economy, a strong demand globally for gasoline and petroleum products means that gas prices, in their strong demand period during the summer, will indeed head up as they have for the past 30 -40 years.”

As of Wednesday, the average gas price in Alberta was $1.17 and the average driver is paying approximately $9 more to fill their vehicle than at the beginning of the year.

With files from CTV’s Alesia Fieldberg