A person can barely execute a three-point turn these days without running into complaints about high fuel prices, and no wonder. It’s an expensive situation in a country with so many gas-guzzling vehicles.
The $1 per litre mark once seemed a barrier beyond which the price would never go. Now that it has, there’s no telling where it will end up.
Just how expensive is gasoline across this country? A website called gasticker.com tracks that information courtesy of users who choose to provide a price for a given location on a given date and time.
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It’s not clear whether verification is part of the website service, which is something to keep in mind when examining its data.
In any case, based on gasticker numbers, we can assume that Alberta prices in general were two to 20 cents cheaper than Saskatchewan and Manitoba prices during the first full week of September.
A station in Fort Macleod is said to have sold gas for 89.9 cents per litre on Sept. 9. In the same town, gas was selling for $1.14.9 per litre the day before.
Someplace in Winnipeg was selling gas for 87 cents per litre on Sept. 11 but there’s no word on how long that lasted. That was the cheapest price encountered in a brief examination of the website on Sept. 11.
The Lloydminster price was $1.12.9 on both sides of the border on Sept. 5 but a price check on Central Butte, Sask., showed a price of $1.40.2 on Sept. 9. That same price was keyed into the website by somebody in Deloraine, Man., on the same day. Quite a strain on the pocketbook, that.
How expensive is gas relative to other liquids? The question took us, list in hand, to several Saskatoon grocery stores to price similar products and brands and calculate an average price per litre.
The gas price in Saskatoon, at $1.17.9 on Sept. 11, is more expensive than bottled water, at an average $1.11 per litre. However, water was more expensive than gas sold in Regina Sept. 10 at $1.10.
Canola oil sells for about $3.64 per litre, which gives one pause when considering canola as an attractive biofuel source. V-8 vegetable juice sells for about $2.28 per litre and tomato juice for $1.39.
Milk, once more expensive than gas, came in at 98 cents per litre and vinegar at 89 cents. Coke is the best deal, in dollar terms if nothing else. It was calculated at 66 cents per litre, or about half the current price of gas.
The eye popper in the research was ice cream. Ordinary brands round out at about $2.60 per litre but Haagen-Dazs, that premium brand, pencils out at $13.18.
Maybe Haagen-Dazs is delivered by SUV.
