Gas prices head into the unknown

By Laine Sedore

With gas prices so high, people around Loyalist College are worried about money.

Gas Prices in the Quinte region don't look like they will lowering anytime soon. Photo by Laine Sedore

“My parents drive a lot and they commute to work so I am a little concerned about the rising gas prices and affecting how much they can spend on other things such as groceries, but yeah it’s going to put a little bit more of pinch on my parents,” said Kacey Chapman, a student at Loyalist.

Gas prices in the Quinte region hovered around $1.30 a litre  this week and things don’t look to be changing soon. With the summer traveling season coming, gas prices are likely to rise even more.

“That’s the time where demand for fuel is at its peak, and you could probably bet that gas prices will continue to rise over the summer. Which will wreak havoc on everything from day to day consumption patterns and ability to have extra money for tourism and stuff like that.” said Scott Maxwell, spokesperson for Liberal MP Dan McTeague, founder of the website Tomorrow’s Gas Price Today.

Others around Loyalist say that driving is a necessity and aren’t too concerned with the price of gas.

“It’s not going to affect my driving unfortunately because I still have to get places, but my goodness what is it $1.29 a litre right now that’s ridiculous,” said Peter Sinclair a student at Loyalist.

If prices stay the way they are or even start to rise, people may be forced to find another way of transportation.

“It certainly does force people to make other decisions in terms of how they get to and from certain places work and other things and at times people say that it has helped foster greener ways of traveling and may force governments to put more money in public transit. Really the reality of the problem is that it shouldn’t be .25 cents higher then it was last year which is what we’re seeing on average in Eastern Ontario.” Maxwell said.

Maxwell said that the sky is the limit for how gas is priced and that no one really knows when gas will go up or down. Higher gas prices will lead to higher retail prices he said.

“If we have some sort of instability in the world you’ll see automatically, speculators drive up the price for the next month or the month after that in terms of the contract for refined fuel and as a result we pay for it at the retail level,” said Maxwell.