
"B.C and Vancouver import every last barrel of gasoline and diesel from region of the United States," said Vijay Muralidharan, an energy analyst with R Cube Economic Consulting Inc.

The Phillips 66 refinery in Ferndale, Wash., was shut down for maintenance earlier this month, taking about 65,000 barrels a day worth of gasoline offline.


On a day when the benchmark price for a barrel of oil lost about a dollar, gasoline prices skyrocketed in parts of the country on Thursday, with Thunder Bay seeing average prices jump by as much as 20 cents a litre, and Edmonton and Calgary moved by a similar amount on Friday - even as the price of oil lost another 50 cents. But imbalances between supply and demand have caused pump prices to move in the opposite direction, and the effect on Canadian drivers has been dramatic. The price of a barrel of oil has fallen by about 20 per cent in the past month, a situation that would normally result in a comparable decline in the price consumers see when they fill up their cars with gasoline.
