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When oil prices crashed at the end of 2014 — from a high of $110 per barrel to roughly half within a few months, and eventually bottoming out at about $35 in early 2016 — a funny thing happened with Vancouver’s gas prices.

They went down a little, but not nearly the same as the bulk base price.

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Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives economist Marc Lee has taken a look at how gas prices have tracked over the past few years and found data that broke down where the increases were coming.

While the price of oil globally fell by 68 per cent, the price of gas in the Lower Mainland fell just 18 per cent.

And now local gas prices are actually higher than they were during their 2014 peak, while the global price of oil remains two-thirds of its 2014 peak.

What Lee found was that the growth in prices was heavily tied to the resurgent price of crude, but also due to increased profits for refineries. Taxes, which some have said is the big problem, have actually only gone up a comparatively small amount.