Thursday morning, BCGasPrices.com listed a number of Osoyoos and Oliver gasoline stations as offering among the cheapest fuel province-wide at $1.049 a litre.
The cheapest gasoline right now is in Fernie, where a station is offering unleaded fuel at 98.9 cents a litre. Several others in Fernie, Fort St. John, Pricne George and Kamloops are offering gas at prices between 99.9¢ and $1.029.
But those amounts were above the 94.9 cents a litre offered by two Penticton stations — Petro Canada on Westminster Avenue and Shell on Fairview Avenue — Tuesday morning as the price of gasoline bottomed out in Penticton.
By afternoon, both had raised their prices to back up to $1.149 per litre, but competitors were slower to follow suit, with at least three other stations still at 94.9 cents as of 3 p.m.
What is considered to be a local gasoline price war is believed to have been started by the Petro Canada on Westminster Avenue, but an employee who answered the phone there said she wasn’t authorized to talk to the media.
Discounts spilled south to Oliver, but not north to Summerland, where the price was stuck at $1.339. The lowest in Kelowna was $1.179.
GasBuddy.com released a pre-Christmas market analysis that predicted the cost of fuel would fall due to low oil prices.
According to BCGasPrices.com, the average cost for a litre of unleaded fuel in B.C. is currently 125.1 cents a litre.
Story Written By Melanie Eksal, in Penticton BC
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