On Feb. 28, the United States and Israel launched an attack on Iran, killing the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. At least 3,000 people in Iran have been killed.

While Canada remains formally uninvolved in the war, it’s not been immune from its impacts. The war has driven upward the price of crude oil, a commodity whose price is heavily influenced by supply and demand.

Oil prices have begun to fall following the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to commercial vessels. But it could be a while before gasoline prices are back to what they were in February.

Larry Hughes, a retired professor and a current research fellow at Dalhousie University’s MacEachen Institute for Public Policy, spoke with CBC News about how the war overseas impacts gasoline prices in Nova Scotia.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Most of the gasoline sold in Nova Scotia is refined at the Irving Oil refinery in Saint John. Where does that oil come from?

Most of the oil comes from the United States. In 2025, it was about 54 per cent. That was the major international supplier. We then have Saudi Arabia at about 21 per cent, Nigeria at 20 per cent and then a few other countries at four per cent. So, we would be affected by the price of crude anyway because it is essentially a global de facto price, the price of Brent [crude].

United States crude that’s brought in is priced in Brent. The crude from overseas, from Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and so forth is also priced in Brent. So that’s going to affect us as well.

If most of our gasoline in Nova Scotia is refined from crude oil from the United States, why is this war impacting the price we pay at the pump?

There is a de facto world price for oil called Brent crude. Brent crude is a light, sweet crude and most oil sold on the world market, not all, but much of it, definitely in Europe and North America, is priced with Brent.

So if Brent crude prices go up, we are affected by them and that’s in part because there’s a shortage in Asia now, which means oil can be sold for a higher price in Asia, as well as North America.

Are there any historical comparisons for such dramatic increases to the price of gasoline?

There was a considerable spike when Russia invaded Ukraine. It was far higher than it’s been in the war so far, although the war was getting close to it.

The really big disruption was during the 1970s, the so-called Arab oil embargo and then the Iranian revolution. Those two events resulted in considerable price hikes, and when you were probably talking of gasoline, 30 cents or 40 cents a litre. I don’t have the exact numbers off the top of my head, but you would see prices going up probably 50 per cent, as they have here, increasing dramatically.

Can you talk a bit about the other ways that these increases in crude oil prices can impact people without a car? People who aren’t going to the gas station?

Even if you don’t have a car or you have an electric vehicle, and you use fuel oil for space heating, it will affect you. The price has gone up from about $1.80 or so to well over $2 now. About a quarter of Nova Scotians are still heating with oil. So they are going to be impacted by this greatly.

And you can say, ‘Well, I don’t heat with oil, I heat with electricity and I drive an electric vehicle. I’m still safe.’ No, because there is the price of diesel fuel the heavy-goods trucks use.

The average distance driven in Nova Scotia by a heavy-goods vehicle would raise the price, assuming it was constant on Feb. 27 and constant as of early April, it would raise the price by about $14,000 a year.

Anyone driving a truck is not going to absorb that cost themselves. It has to be passed on. So any goods that are transported into Nova Scotia are going to cost more for the simple reason the price of fuel has increased.

If you talk about longer distance trucks, it would be far higher than that. So what it boils down to is these costs will be passed on to the consumer.

We’ve started to see gasoline prices drop. Will it take a long time for everything to return to normal?

The [Nova Scotia] Energy Board reduced the price of gasoline by about a penny and a half and diesel fuel by .05 cents. [They] have decided that the price drop of … crude oil is sufficient to lower the price. I mean, these are tiny, tiny amounts considering where the price was before the war and where it is now.

They will help somewhat, but it’s still a very small amount.

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