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For decades, drivers in Alberta filled up their cars and pickups with the cheapest gasoline in the country. Not any more.

The provincial carbon tax of 4.5 cents a litre that went into effect Jan. 1 makes Alberta the third-cheapest province to buy gasoline, which averaged $1.11 a litre on Wednesday. That’s higher than Manitoba’s $1.08 and Saskatchewan’s $1.06 a litre, according to GasBuddy.com, a pump price tracking website.

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“Alberta is no longer king when it comes to gas prices,” said Dan McTeague, a senior petroleum analyst at GasBuddy and former member of parliament. “Alberta is now somewhere in the middle of the pack.”

Alberta has enjoyed the lowest average pump prices in Canada since at least 1970, with fuel taxes that were sometimes half that of eastern provinces, according to McTeague.

The change comes just as Alberta is emerging from a two-year recession caused by the biggest oil price rout in decades. The economy contracted 6.5 per cent over two years as oil producers curtailed investment and laid off workers, according to a Royal Bank of Canada report last month. The unemployment rate of 9 per cent in November was the highest since the early 1990s, according to provincial data.