Wawa Gas Prices: Why Gas Costs More in Wawa, by the Numbers
Wawa gas prices were 191.9¢ a litre on Oct. 22, about 26¢ more than the Sault. Official data shows why small Highway 17 towns pay more than the cities.
Regular gas, October 22, 2026 (crowd-sourced GasBuddy prices, 5:48 p.m. EDT)
- Wawa: 191.9¢ a litre at every station that had a posted price
- Sault Ste. Marie: 165.6¢ (median of 17 stations)
- Sudbury: 156.8¢ · Thunder Bay: 189.9¢ · Marathon: 195.9¢
- Filling a 50-litre tank cost about $13 more in Wawa than in the Sault
Wawa gas prices were 191.9 cents a litre for regular on October 22, 2026. That’s about 26 cents more than the typical price in Sault Ste. Marie and 35 cents more than in Sudbury. Thunder Bay and Marathon were about the same as Wawa, or higher.
The surprise is in the province’s own numbers. Ontario’s big northern cities are not expensive places to buy gas: over the past year, Sudbury, the Sault and Thunder Bay all averaged below the Ontario average. The premium belongs to small towns strung along Highway 17, and Wawa is one of them.
Wawa gas prices compared, October 22, 2026
On October 22, Wawa paid more for regular than every city to its south and east. Here’s what GasBuddy showed at 5:48 p.m. EDT.
| Town | Regular (¢/litre) | Stations with a price | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wawa | 191.9 | 3 of 5 | All three showed the same price |
| Marathon | 195.9 | 3 of 3 | All posted that day |
| Thunder Bay | 189.9 (median) | 26 | 17 stations at exactly 189.9 |
| Sault Ste. Marie | 165.6 (median) | 17 | Range 164.2 to 169.9 |
| Sudbury | 156.8 (median) | 33 | Costco lowest at 149.9 |
| White River | no price posted | 0 of 3 in town | No usable data |
GasBuddy prices are reported by motorists and station owners, so they’re only as fresh as the last report. In Wawa, Petro-Canada on Mission Road had a price posted that morning. The Canco on Mission Road and the Esso on Pinewood Dr. were last updated about two days earlier, at the same 191.9. The Esso at 111 Mission Road and LeClair Fuels had no price listed.
On a 50-litre fill-up, the 26.3-cent gap with the Sault works out to about $13.15.
Northern cities aren’t the expensive ones
The idea that “gas costs more in the North” is only half right. Ontario’s weekly fuel survey, collected for the province by Kalibrate, covers 14 cities but not Wawa, Marathon or White River. In that survey, the northern cities usually came in under the provincial average.
| City | Average regular price, past 53 weeks | Compared with Ontario average | Weeks above Ontario average |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sudbury | 148.2¢ | 8.9¢ lower | 3 of 53 |
| Sault Ste. Marie | 151.4¢ | 5.7¢ lower | 14 of 53 |
| Thunder Bay | 155.4¢ | 1.7¢ lower | 20 of 53 |
| Ontario average | 157.1¢ | (baseline) | n/a |
Weeks of October 20, 2025 to October 19, 2026. Source: Ontario motor fuel prices, weekly data file, our averages.
The latest official week (October 19, 2026) shows the same picture: the Sault at 169.3¢, Sudbury at 159.7¢, Thunder Bay at 175.9¢, and the Ontario average at 174.7¢. Toronto West was 176.9¢.
So when Wawa pays 26 cents more than the Sault, distance from Toronto isn’t the reason. Wawa’s situation is what sets it apart.
Why Wawa gas prices are higher than the Sault’s
Federal regulators point to the same handful of reasons, and Wawa has all of them.
- Distance from the fuel terminal. “Typically, the greater the distance from the refinery or terminal to the retailer, the greater the distribution costs,” the Competition Bureau explains. Fuel reaches Wawa by truck along Highway 17.
- No pipeline at the northern terminals. An industry analysis by Kent Group, published by the Canadian Energy Marketers Association in 2019, found that northern terminals such as Sault Ste. Marie and Thunder Bay have no access to refined-product pipelines. They’re supplied by ship, rail or truck, and trucking is the most expensive.
- Low sales volume. Natural Resources Canada says stations that sell less fuel “may charge more” to cover fixed costs, and may miss out on volume discounts from wholesalers. A town of about 2,700 people sells far less gas than a city of 70,000.
- Few competitors. The Competition Bureau notes that “generally, more competition means lower prices.” Wawa has five stations. The Sault has more than two dozen.
Matching prices at every station in town can look suspicious, but the Competition Bureau says identical prices are legal unless competitors agreed to set them. We found no complaint or finding about Wawa.
Taxes are the same in Wawa as in the Sault
Taxes don’t explain the gap, because every town in Ontario pays the same per-litre taxes.
- Ontario gasoline tax: 9.0¢ a litre. The province cut it in 2022 and made the lower rate permanent on July 1, 2025, according to the 2026 Ontario Budget. It didn’t change in 2026. The lower “Northern Ontario” rate on the province’s gasoline tax page applies only to aviation fuel, not to gas at the pump.
- Federal excise tax: paused. Ottawa suspended its 10¢-a-litre excise tax on gasoline on April 20, 2026, and has extended the pause to January 31, 2027, according to Finance Canada.
- Federal carbon charge: zero. The consumer carbon price was cancelled effective April 1, 2025.
The one tax that does differ is HST, because it’s 13% of whatever the pump price is. A higher price before tax means more HST. By our math, about 3 cents of Wawa’s 26-cent gap with the Sault is HST on the higher price.
What changes next: the excise tax comes back
Expect prices everywhere to rise by about 5 cents a litre, plus HST, on February 1, 2027, and by another 5 cents on April 1, 2027, if nothing else changes. That’s when the federal excise tax returns: at half rate (5¢) in February and March, then the full 10¢ from April 1, 2027.
The extension is in Bill C-38, the Canadian Fuel Affordability Act, which was introduced in Parliament on September 21, 2026. Finance Canada puts the cost of the extension at about $2.9 billion.
What about diesel?
Wawa doesn’t show a clear diesel premium. On October 22, GasBuddy’s Wawa diesel prices were 255.9¢ to 263.9¢, while the Sault’s median was 269.9¢. Most of Wawa’s diesel prices were more than a day old, so this could change with fresher reports.
The Sault itself is the diesel outlier in the official data. Over the past year, diesel there averaged 7.8 cents above the Ontario average and was higher in 41 of 53 weeks.
The wholesale margin is where prices jumped this year
The province breaks pump prices into parts for only two cities, Toronto and Thunder Bay, so this is the closest official look at a northern price. In Thunder Bay, regular rose 48.8 cents a litre between October 2025 and September 2026.
- Crude oil: up 32.8¢
- Wholesale margin: up 24.3¢
- Retail margin: down 4.0¢
- Federal excise tax: down 10¢ (paused)
Thunder Bay stations kept only about 2.9 cents a litre as their retail margin in September, against 11.2 cents in Toronto. So the jump came mostly from crude and wholesale costs, not from local stations.
The province doesn’t publish this breakdown for Wawa, so we can’t say how much of Wawa’s price is wholesale, trucking or retail margin.
Questions we’re still asking
These are the things that would explain Wawa’s number precisely, and none of them is public yet:
- Which terminal supplies Wawa’s stations, the Sault or Thunder Bay?
- What does it cost to truck fuel up Highway 17 to Wawa?
- Do Wawa’s stations buy from the same wholesaler or distributor?
If you run a station or a fuel distribution business in the area and can help answer these, contact us. We’ll update this article.
Fuel prices also matter for the plan to reopen Michipicoten Harbour to shipping, which aims to move more freight by water instead of by truck. Rising costs are also a question for every candidate in Wawa’s municipal election. If you travel Highway 17 often, our record of emergency room closures along the North Shore shows how far apart the open ones can be.
How we got these numbers
- Station prices: we collected every GasBuddy listing for Wawa, Sault Ste. Marie, White River, Marathon, Sudbury and Thunder Bay at 5:48 p.m. EDT on October 22, 2026, using a scraping tool. These are credit prices reported by users, station owners and data feeds. GasBuddy doesn’t verify them.
- What we left out: 14 stations in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, priced in U.S. dollars per gallon, and a handful of stations that appear to be on First Nations land in the Sault and Thunder Bay areas, where prices may not be comparable. With those included, the Sault median was 165.45¢.
- Official data: the Ontario Ministry of Energy and Mines’ weekly retail price file and its monthly pump-price breakdown, from data.ontario.ca, downloaded October 22, 2026. The averages and gaps above are our calculations from that data.
We’ll refresh our Wawa gas prices comparison each month, and when the excise tax steps back up in February and April 2027.