All those weeks of having the price of gasoline in the low $.70 to mid $.60 range are pretty much over now as spring is around the corner meaning a season of change also for the petroleum industry.

The price of gas shot up by 12-14 cents in some parts of the Foothills last week and those won't dropping anytime soon.

Dan McTeague, senior petroleum analyst with GasBuddy.com, says oil refineries are in the process from switching their production of winter to summer gasoline.

"There's a lot of refineries down in the states that are already moving into blending into the summer gasoline and there's just no money in the winter gasoline because the cost of butane is expensive and they've just made a big conversion," he says. "That's kept prices up quite a bit for all of us in Western Canada".

McTeague says local retailers have had no choice but to raise the price at the pumps due to the wholesale price increase.

"What we're looking at is a continuation of prices moving up pushing into the mid $.80 range. That's because if you're a gas station in Okotoks you're paying about 76.2 cents a litre for gasoline so that's likely to increase to another penny-penny and a half by Wednesday."

McTeague does say despite the raise in prices it could be worse right now but on the global markets the Canadian dollar has bounced back in value against the US greenback.

"Probably saved about 2-2.5 cents a litre from potential increases but we could back up into the mid '80s pushing towards $.90 by the first week of April as we convert from winter to summer gasoline so keep that in mind that's a big transition period for refineries especially in Canada."

Questions, comments, or story ideas? Email us at news@okotoksonline.com