Getting even More on Low Gas Prices

Gas prices in Ottawa have dropped very low beginning Sunday night (January 31, 2016). On Thursday night, it has dropped to a low of 66.1 cents per litre. As I was driving home, with only three gas bars down in my car, I could not help but stop by the ever-so-full service station to fill up the 7 dollars of gas.

Petro Canada

With the Petro Canada Fuel Savings Reward Card, you can save an additional 5 cents or 10 cents per litre, bringing the recent gas prices down to 61.1 cents or 56.1 cents per litre.

Not only that, if you use your CIBC Petro-Points MasterCard to pay for your gas purchase, you can save an additional 2 cents per litre. This brings your return to approximately 3%, up 1% if you were paying gas at 1 dollar per litre. If used in conjunction with your Petro Canada Fuel Savings Rewards Card, the return then becomes approximately 10% and 17%.

With the low gas prices, this makes the CIBC Petro-Points MasterCard one of the top cards in terms of return.

Ultramar

The National Bank Ultramar MasterCard gives you a cashback equivalent to a 3 cents discount per litre of gasoline purchased, which is about 2.5%. With the gas being 65.9 cents now, this brings the discount up to approximately 4.5%, almost a 2% increase.

Esso

The Esso gas prices have been one of the lowest I have seen so far this past week, clocking in at 66.1 cents per litre.

With the Esso Extra Price Privileges card, you can save 5 cents per litre with your gas purchase. You can purchase the Esso Extra Price Privileges card for 1500 points for the 5 cents discount. This ends up being about $10 in value for the card.

If we use 66.1 cents per litre as the point of reference, then we will be getting a return of approximately 15% with the Esso Extra Price Privileges card.

On a side note, you can also earn Esso Extra points with the RBC Esso Extra Visa.

Fuel Surcharges

While oil prices are dropping to a record low, it seems that fuel surcharges remain at a constant rate, and that’s because most travelers will pay for those fees regardless whether oil is low or not.

The Bottom Line

Lower gas prices definitely benefit us as consumers (who doesn’t like cheap gas), allowing us to receive more in return for our purchases. However, this also means that smaller independent retailers will not be able to survive the low returns on their gas, forcing them to leave the market as a whole. This happens when prices are set fairly high during the day and then dropped significantly lower at night. Consequently, only the few larger retailers will survive, allowing them to increase gas prices in the long run. If this is the case, it is definitely the time to take advantage over our high returns on gas purchases.