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VICTORIA — Premier John Horgan got the answer he was looking for Friday, via a report from the inquiry into gasoline prices that said British Columbians were being overcharged at the pump by almost half a billion dollars a year.

The B.C. Utilities Commission delivered that finding in a 100-plus page report that deftly cut through the complexities of the gasoline marketplace.

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The inquiry found no evidence of collusion in fixing prices. But it did find the industry was behaving like an oligopoly, with a limited number of players and less than competitive pricing of the product.

Bottom line: there is an unexplained markup of 13 cents per litre on gasoline in southwestern B.C., and six cents in the northern part of the province.

Moreover, for the market in and around Vancouver, the markup is determined on the basis of what inquiry chair David Morton called a “tail wags dog” calculation.

Only about three per cent of the region’s gasoline supply comes from the U.S. Pacific Northwest. But the spot market in Seattle is used to price the remaining 97 per cent.