Some areas in Saskatchewan have been seeing a recent impact on gas prices, as summer winds down, and gas will soon switch back to winter-blend. In the meantime, gas stations have seen a short-term bump thanks to a recent happening south of the border. GasBuddy Senior Petroleum Analyst Matt McClain talks about a recent refinery affecting gas prices. "There was an oil refinery, actually, on the U.S. side of things in Whiting, Indiana, owned by BP. It went through a bit of a natural disaster last week. A flood shut everything down, and that has created some problems, believe it or not, in places like Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and also multiple U.S. states. That's the primary reason that we suddenly saw a bit of an uptick." That's had a big impact on average prices across the prairies, with the refinery working with 440,000 barrels per day, according to McClain. "Just over the past 24, 48 hours and even the past week, gas prices are up about 5.5 cents per litre and across the Saskatchewan greater area, up about 7.1 cents per litre over the past week as well. That is pretty much directly attributed to the fact that the oil refinery had to go offline. Once that is restarted, which BP says they are in the process of doing right now, things will slowly start getting back to a sense of normalcy." McClain says prices may not fully level out by the long weekend, but should recover in the weeks after that. The impact an event like the one that happened to the refinery can have on Canada underscores the interconnectedness of the two countries' energy markets. "Obviously, keeping a very watchful eye on a couple of things, geopolitical wild cards, those remain all across the globe, as well as hurricane season. I know that's really far away from most of Canada. But the reality is, the US and the Canadian markets are really interlinked when it comes to oil and fuel prices, as well as other energy aspects. So what can impact one usually does impact the other. So we do have those little wild cards out there that were on guard for and could happen." While gas has seen some impact, McCain says farmers can breathe easy as diesel looks to be steady, though they also won't be getting a break anytime soon. "For the most part, where prices have been over the past few weeks, that's what we're predicting for the next couple of weeks, no major upsets at this particular point. So in terms of relief, not necessarily so, but hopefully with again, fingers crossed, no geopolitical wildcard suddenly going crazy or a massive hurricane in the Gulf, hopefully things will not increase at this particular point. So I guess it's a glass-half-full and a glass-half-empty kind of situation." As soon as the province passes the refinery troubles by mid-September, prices for gas are expected to further slip as the gas blend changes to winter. "Once we get past this little hiccup that we've had going on, once we go back to the winter reformulated fuel products, that should actually help prices just a little bit, several cents per litre, somewhere in that neighbourhood, three to five cents per litre. That is certainly good news. That's still a few weeks away. We've got just a little bit more time before we can start factoring that in." McCain says they'll keep their fingers crossed, hoping that no other major events make for any price pains at the pump before the winter-blend gas is at the stations.