One of the co-founders of the Consumer Group for Fair Gas Prices around the turn of the 2000s says the price of gas is out of control.

Dennis O’Keefe, who is also a former mayor of St. John’s, was commenting as gasoline prices threaten to catch up to the all-time high in metro of approximately $1.49 per litre. It went up by more than four cents a litre today to bring the price into the mid-$1.40s.

O’Keefe says they lobbied the Grimes government to create an independent price-setting agency, which was done. That office was disbanded when the Tories took over and gave that duty to the Public Utilities Board. O’Keefe says the current process is not working.

The price of a barrel of oil currently is around $70. The price of a barrel was well over $100 when gas cost just slightly less than $1.50 per litre.