BARRIE

Gas prices rise ahead of the Easter long weekend

CTV Barrie Published Thursday, April 17, 2014 11:48AM EDT Last Updated Thursday, April 17, 2014 6:35PM EDT

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There will be a lot of people travelling this Easter long weekend and they’ll be paying a very high price to gas up for those trips.

Gasoline prices are near record highs and other fuels are expensive right now too and that could mean other costs could rise too.

In the past week and a half the price of gas has gone up by about eight cents a litre. Gas price analyst Dan McTeague says price typically spike this time of year as the switch from winter to summer gas blends is made. Bu this most recent increase is part of a larger spike in energy prices – costs that will be passed on the consumer in many ways.

“This is going to affect food prices and the entire basket of goods,” says McTeague. “This is inflationary and it’s going to make its impact more widely felt through the economy.”

McTeague expects food prices to rise by about 15% over the summer but that increase is not just to cover rising gas prices. It was a long, cold winter and the price of natural gas and propane has been high.

“There’s probably about 130% increase in propane this past winter which is obviously a huge hit.”

Marianne Den Haan runs the dairy at Sheldon Creek Farms near Alliston and says everything they do costs more than it ever did before – running the tractors, heating the barn and pasteurizing the milk.

“Raising our prices is the last resort but having said that – everything is becoming more expensive.”

And when you’re dealing with large scale farms, even a small increase in fuel prices has a huge impact.

“It can range from $20 to $40 an acre just on fuel whenever you’re growing a crop per acre. That doesn’t sound like a lot but when you put that over 500 or 1500 acres – it comes to quite a hefty number,” says Emily Den Haan.

And those costs are often passed right back to the consumer.

The record high gas price in Barrie is 138.6 a litre – that was set back in May of 2011. Gas price experts don’t expect that record to be broken this weekend. In fact, gas prices are expected to go down on Saturday but they are predicting those prices will jump a game on Tuesday.

Here is a look at the price for a litre of gas around the region on Friday: