Why the U.S. midterm election is affecting GTA gas prices

Drivers across the GTA will have another chance to take advantage of a dip in gas prices. As it's set for a big drop tomorrow, Greg Ross joins us from a gas station near Avenue and Wilson. And Greg, what can we expect at the pumps? Well, the way you look at gas prices at this North End gas station here behind me. They're sitting at about $1.68 per litre. That's down about 10 cents from where they were at the start of the week. And we're now just two hours away from seeing those prices drop again. They're expected to go down about 8 or 9 cents overnight. And it's not just regular gas that's going down. Diesel is going to drop as well. We spoke with gas expert Dan McTeague. Here's what we can expect. Stations will hit 160, 159.9 at the stroke of midnight tonight and of course that's a price we haven't seen since early August. Diesel will be available for about 234.9. Still high but definitely heading in the right direction compared to where it was just a few weeks ago. Now, you might be wondering why gas prices have dropped nearly 20 cents in the past few days. Well, the short answer is the U.S. midterm elections. The reason prices have gone up so much in recent months is because of the U.S. war against Iran led by U.S. President Donald Trump. While we saw a rebuke of the U.S. president with Democrats scoring that massive victory on Tuesday, economists say the gas prices dropping were simply just a reaction to that. Gas prices are impacted by a lot of different forces, but a good chunk of it is impacted by what we call a futures market, or a lot of people betting on what the price of oil will look like, not today, but three months from now. The way that the midterm election in the US has an impact on this futures market is for the first time, there seems to be a force constraining Donald Trump that may mean an end of a war is in sight. All of that continues to be in the future, and it's a knee-jerk reaction, but that sense of optimism that the war in Iran might be ending soon means that they expect oil prices to drop into the future. So you want to fill up quickly because it appears that this dip in gas prices is going to be short-lived. We are expecting prices to start to go back up over the weekend, at least a few cents. We won't see anything close to pre-war prices until there is a definitive end to this war in Iran. And Dwight, that is something that is very hard to predict. It really is. Thank you for this, Greg.